


don't pick on me ('cause one act of kindness could be deathly)

by poisonivyxx



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Female Friendship, Get Together, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-11-02
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:20:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonivyxx/pseuds/poisonivyxx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Darcy had to say something,</i> anything, <i>to get her to stop looking at her like that. “He’s...” she cleared her throat, then continued bravely, “He’s a good man.”</i></p>
<p>  <i>Maria Hill stared at her levelly. “I know,” she said slowly, “But he’s not always a man.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

_Now that I’ve met you,_

_Would you object to_

_Never seeing each other again?_

Stark Tower had a billion fucking floors and a thousand people in dark pantsuits that probably cost more than her college tuition and an elevator that _didn’t fucking make sense_.

For one thing, the numbers weren’t in numerical order. L was in the middle of the panel, with 2 and 3 and 4 spiralling off to the side, and up in a corner four inches to her right was a bright gold button that said **P** in some pimp-ass embellished script. Darcy could only assume the P stood for Penthouse. But after some of the crazy things she had already seen, she wouldn’t be surprised if it stood for Prostitutes instead or something.

Another fucked up thing about the elevator was that half the buttons weren’t numbers. Sandwiched between ‘8’ and ‘1’ was a button marked ‘Labs’. Darcy had already discovered pressing it made the elevator _whoosh_ up and open onto a pool. There had been people scuba diving in it, and they had all given her reproachful looks through their goggles. “Oops,” she had said, “Can someone tell me where R &D is?”

“Mmgjh bhgh bugh,” one of the scuba divers had said helpfully. Darcy found she really didn’t want to know.

The R&D button took her to the roof. The elevator _opened directly onto the roof_. And the headwinds at a billion fucking stories up? No joke.

She then proceeded to close her eyes and stab buttons at random, and was taken in succession to a row of empty cubicles, a bright purple swank apartment that could only be described as a _pimp pad_ , an unfinished floor (literally unfinished, the ground yawned in a hole at her feet; beneath her again was the pool), some very enthusiastic strippers, half of which were buck nude, and Darcy probably couldn’t count them as strippers at that point, then the roof again, then the cubicles. She was pretty sure some buttons were on a loop.

She gave a little moan and sank down into a crouch on her sensible shoes, hoping her sensible skirt wouldn’t rip. “Okay, Darce,” she said out loud, “You just need to be _logical_ here. Take a fucking page from your fucking clothes, stop saying ‘fuck’ so much—you’re on the clock now, and let’s _figure this shit out_.” She took a deep breath. “Okay. There are maybe only a thousand buttons on this thing. At least one of them has to lead to R &D. So maybe let’s just try and think like Tony Stark? If I was a crazy, narcissistic genius, where would I put Jane Foster?”

Her finger hovered over the button shaped like Iron Man’s face, and gingerly pressed it.

“WARNING” the elevator immediately began intoning, “WARNING. WARNING.”

“ _Fuck!_ ” Darcy sprang up and pressed her fingers to her ears. “Fuck fuck fuck!”

“WARNING”

“Warning against _what?_ ” Red lights began to flash in a dizzying manner. Darcy began to hop up and down from panic.

“WARNING. WARNING.”

“Fuck! What do I have to do to see Jane?”

The lights and the WARNING cut out abruptly, and from the blessed silence and the ringing in her ears, a soothing British voice said, “All you had to do was ask, Ms. Lewis.”

Darcy removed her hands from her ears warily. “What? Who said that?”

“I am JARVIS, Stark Tower’s personalized AI program. I provide many services that improve upon the well-being of the Tower’s workers and visitors, among which includes,” a smug lilt infused its dry butler voice, “ _wayfinding_.”

“Oh.”

“If there was a specific floor you wished to visit, Ms. Lewis, all you had to do was request it of me.”

“Wait, how did you know my name?”

“I process all relevant data in the Tower, and approve visitors before they are allowed entry. Director Fury has uploaded your file into my network, and I have updated your security clearances within the Tower accordingly.” The smugness again. “I am _very_ intelligent, Ms. Lewis.”

Darcy sank down into what she was beginning to think of was _her corner_ of the elevator and hugged her knees to herself. “I’m sure you are,” she said faintly. Then, anger coursed through her. “If you are so intelligent, you must have known I was here for Jane! Why didn’t you just take me to her? _Why did you let me press the buttons?_ ”

“My apologies,” JARVIS said, “Mr. Stark has interfered with my programming in this aspect. My instructions are to leave any newcomers in the elevator alone, until they have said... _the secret password_. Most of the buttons in this elevator are non-operational. I believe Mr. Stark maintains them as some sort of...joke.” His dry tone of voice made it very clear that he did not approve of having billion dollar trick elevators, secret passwords, or the concept of a joke. Darcy found she completely sympathized. “In all other matters, I assure you, I am here to make your stay comfortable in any way I can.”

“Thank you JARVIS.” Darcy patted the side of the elevator gingerly, then returned to her faux-fetal position. “Can I please go see Jane now?”

“R&D Department, 78th floor.” The elevator began moving with a now faint _whoosh_.

“You know,” JARVIS confided after a moment, “you didn’t really say the secret password. No one ever does. I just couldn’t let you press any more buttons. Some of them are...disturbing.”

Darcy thought about what a highly intelligent artificial intelligence program at Stark Towers could find disturbing, then about the button that had a picture of a smiley face, and shuddered. She _never wanted to know_.

“And in the future, Ms. Lewis, may I recommend reading your SHIELD orientation booklet?”

Darcy fished its crumpled remains out of her bag and started to squint at it. She had totally meant to read it, but had spilled her coffee on her messenger bag when a _man carrying a bazooka_ had bumped into her at SHIELD headquarters, and then had to spend twenty minutes in the washroom drying out her phone and wringing out her bag and then she had to make sure she didn’t get coffee on her sensible, ready-for-the-first-day-of-the-real-world, outfit, and then she had plumb forgot.

She was holding it up to the dim light, and trying to unstick the pages when the elevator doors opened and JARVIS announced, “30th floor.”

She glanced up, perplexed, and saw a man staring down at her. Scratch that. It was more like a shadow of a man. He was doing his best to blend into the surroundings behind him, dressed in a crinkled dark shirt that was only half tucked into his wrinkled pants, and topped off with a crumpled jacket. His greying hair was mashed on half of his head, as if he had slept on it then forgotten to comb, a five o’clock shadow spreading on his chin, and his eyes had dark smudges under them, behind glasses, she was bemused to see, that were also smudged. Tension radiated in every line of his body, and he looked like he wanted to bolt.

To Darcy, he looked like salvation.

“Please tell me you’re actually a person, that actually has a function, that isn’t just some elaborate troll, because _I swear Tony Stark, I did not press the smiley face button_.”

“Um,” the man said. “I am an actual...I am a person. Not a...troll.” There was a weird cadence to his words, like he was picking them out carefully. She squinted up at him, then realized with a start how much of a mess she must have looked. The contents of her coffee stained bag were strewn out all over the elevator floor, she had the mass of sodden paper that was the SHIELD orientation pamphlet clutched in one hand, somewhere between the roof again and the WARNING, her hair had escaped the meticulous bun she had spent half an hour crafting this morning, and she was still crouched on the ground.

_Stop saying fuck so much_ , she reminded herself, before she plastered on her professional smile, and extended a professional hand for him to shake from her not-as professional position on the ground. “Darcy Lewis, new research assistant,” she chirped brightly, “Forgive the mess, it’s been a...trying twenty minutes.”

A ghost of a smile quirked for a second over his mouth, then flickered away. Darcy found herself staring at it, fascinated. “Elevator joke, huh? My first day I got sent to what appeared to be an elaborate display of Tang dynasty porcelain. It’s okay. I’ll catch the next one.” He didn’t offer to shake her hand.

She left it hanging in the air for just a moment, then began gathering her things and stuffing it into her bag, avoiding his eyes, trying very hard not to feel offended. “No, no,” she said in a rush, “sorry about the mess—“

“I’m Bruce Banner.” The man said quietly, and Darcy froze.

She didn’t need to have read the orientation pamphlet to know who he was. Hell, there had been a whole _seminar_ on it.

Before anyone could even get their SHIELD ID badge they had to be hustled into a room where the ‘imminent threats’ were spelled out for them in stark, terrifying language. Chief among them had been the Hulk. Dr. Banner’s file had been displayed in sickening detail, with security footage from his lab accident being played, and a picture of a beautiful woman that was supposedly his ex, and Darcy had just enough time to get pissed off about the way they were treating this guy’s personal life before they moved off of Bruce Banner and onto the Hulk. Then the pictures started.

Just...dozens and dozens of pictures, of the aftermath, of his battle potential, of possible stressors, with a dry, educational voice intoning things like, “ Virginia, 2003. Colorado, 2003. Brazil, 2007. Virgina, 2008. Harlem, 2008.” Pictures of bodies. 

The capper to the little presentation had been an entrance by Director Fury himself, the first and only time she had ever seen him. He had surveyed the room with his calm eye, waiting until he was sure that every single person in the room knew exactly how dangerous he was, how smart, how professional, then had bitten out, “Look. Don’t be a fucking idiot. When your body tells you to run, you _run_.”

Darcy’s body was telling her to run now. But her problem wasn’t not recognizing what her body was telling her, but apparently not being a fucking idiot because she only froze for a split second before turning back to him and offering her hand and that same bullshit smile.

He was looking at her warily, as if she were the time bomb instead.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, and was proud of the way her voice didn’t catch, not even one bit. “Working for Jane means you’re my boss too, a bit. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Banner.”

He closed his eyes briefly, and rocked back on his heels. “It’s fine, really,” he assured her, with a small, bitter, plastered on smile, “I’ll get the next one.”

_It looks like a strong wind will knock him right out_ , Darcy thought, then made a decision that she’s not really capable of articulating. It was one part protector of the small, three parts rebel, four parts adrenaline, and one part that smile, that deeply, deeply heartbreaking smile. It somehow added up to a whole where she leaned out of the elevator, propped her shoulder to keep it from closing, and just waited.

Dr. Banner sighed eventually, ran one large hand through the matted in bits of his hair, and slumped into the elevator. He didn’t look at her, and put himself in the far corner of the elevator, away from her, and said “My lab, please, JARVIS,” with defeat etched into every line of his body. Darcy knew instinctively right then and there that there was nothing he wouldn’t do, no line of fire Bruce Banner wouldn’t throw himself into to save her, to save _anybody_ , if he could.

The elevator’s doors pinged shut behind him, then Darcy knew that her body was still telling her to run.

“Besides,” she said musingly, just to see what he would do, if she were to, you know, lighten the mood with levity, “you can save me from the strippers.”

Bruce Banner didn’t do a fucking thing at all.

\--

“I’m not talking to you,” Jane Foster said decisively, upon opening her lab door. Her hair was a flyaway mess on top of her head, her cheek was creased with lines that Darcy recognized were made from falling asleep at her bench, her clothes were rumpled and smelled like three day old scientist, and her eyes—they were crazy. She still, however, managed to look completely glamorous.

“Good to see you too, Boss,” Darcy said, and shouldered her way past Jane into the huge lab. It was even worse than she thought. Papers were strewn on benches, under coffee mugs, stuck onto bulletin boards and walls haphazardly with multicoloured tacks and what appeared to be multicolored gum, along with multicolored string, a coffee pot puttered softly on what seemed to be a lab issue hot plate (another was in pieces heaped into a corner—heaped not very well; Darcy could still see shards of glass glinting between bits of paper), about three different toasters  and toaster ovens were plugged into various outlets, wrappers, and the charred remains of food lying around the ground amidst, yes, _more_ paper, each piece covered front and back with cramped, spidery Jane writing, and what looked like a mural of an enormous tree under a night full of stars that covered one back wall.

In short, it looked like the den of a crazy person.

“Oh, Jane,” Darcy said softly.

Jane was hunched over in the doorway, her eyes blinking at Darcy bewilderedly. “I’m not talking to you,” she repeated, huskily.

“But, baby, I’m here for you!” Darcy spread her arms wide and plastered a grin onto her face in the hopes of making Jane smile. Instead, Jane toed the corner of a pile of papers forlornly. “Oh, Jane. When was the last time you slept?”

“I’m not talking to you,” she repeated dully, this time not sounding as sure as she before.

“Jane,” Darcy took her hands in her own, ink stained, with the nails bitten to the quick, something Jane only did when she was dangerously low on steam, “I was on the first flight to New York, I swear. As soon as I saw the big guy on TV, I was booking my ticket. It just took a little time, time to convince them I was who I said I was, that I should be given clearance, and most importantly, that there was _no fucking way_ Dr. Jane Foster, PhD, would be able to properly science without the help of Darcy Lewis, BA.”

Jane blinked down at her. “Really?” she whispered tremulously, and blinked what looked like to be _goddamn tears_ out of her eyes. Jane, who had only ever cried once in Darcy’s presence, not when their funding fell through time after time in New Mexico, the Day From Hell when they were stuck in the middle of nowhere, around the corner from the star cluster that only appeared once every thousand years or something, when their van had broken down, and the rubber bands holding Jane’s favourite telescope had snapped, and Erik had gotten angry for the first and only time that Darcy had known him. Jane hadn’t even cried when Erik left for New York, when the funding had run out on the grant and Darcy had to leave, when she had realized that going to Tromso meant missing Darcy’s graduation. Jane, who only ever cried during the ending of _The Notebook_ , because, as she had admitted through her sniffles, that she was a _sucker for happy endings_ (nevermind that Darcy found the ending of _The Notebook_ incredibly sad), was crying a bit now, and it made anger curl like a heat snake through Darcy’s stomach.

_I will find the persons responsible_ , she thought grimly, _and they and I will have_ words _._

“Jane,” she said with utter conviction, “I will never desert you.”

A smile spread its way onto Jane’s face, slowly and foreign at first, like she had forgotten how to do it, it had been so long, and Darcy hugged her fiercely. “Go to sleep,” she commanded, “when you wake up, everything will be better.”

Darcy led her meekly by the hand down the hall, past the door with the discrete _B. Banner_ name plate that someone had typed neatly onto a piece of paper and tacked up. It stood in stark contrast to the rest of the plates, which had names etched onto metal, and it wasn’t like Tony Stark couldn’t afford it. It looked like, Darcy thought fleetingly, the work of someone who didn’t plan on staying long.

She deposited Jane in bed in the midst of what appeared to be a highly luxurious suite which seemed to comprise the entirety of the 32nd floor, and which might have dulled the edge of the animosity she felt towards Tony Stark, SHIELD, and everybody in the world at large just the slightest bit if she wasn’t absolutely certain that this was the first time Jane had seen them in the three weeks she had ostensibly lived there.  

Darcy seethed out of the suite and into the elevator, and it was only after the doors had pinged closed politely before she was able to come into some semblance of herself. “JARVIS,” she ground out, “who’s in charge around here?”

There was a slight pause. “Mr. Stark is currently in residence of the Tower, overseeing some building plans with—“

“That’ll do,” Darcy snarled. “To start.”

Another slight hesitation. Then, “Penthouse.”

Amidst the whooshing of the elevator, Darcy has just enough presence of mind left to pat the walls fondly.

 “Ms. Lewis—“

“You know, JARVIS,” Darcy said conversationally, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides, “if today really is going to be the start of a beautiful relationship, which I am convinced it is, then we really should get on first name basis with each other.”

“Darcy—“

“Good. My name is Darcy. Not ‘Ms. Lewis’. See? Friends now. So please open the door so I can _punch Tony Stark in the goddamn face._ ”

The doors dinged open.

Darcy strode across what appeared to be a pure marble floor, awash in a glow that burst in through floor the ceiling windows that was letting in the sort of light that Darcy was convinced didn’t exist in New York City anymore, and for all accounts, probably didn’t, since this was the top floor, probably literally above the clouds, and that she only saw as a background to some kind of rage haze going on with her eyes. A dark haired man was standing with his back to her, his fingers on some kind of glowing panel that was moving around, a tall woman leaning over beside him, her features blurring with said rage haze.

The woman lifted her head, catlike, and the man had just enough time to turn around and go, “What the—“ before Darcy _punched Tony Stark in the goddamn face_.

What happened after that was a bit of a blur. Actually, she remembered every detail of what happened after that with perfect clarity, and would probably take it all to her grave, but was still hoping valiantly that if she repeated that it was all a bit of a blur enough, it would start to become true.

This is what happened after:

-First of all: Punching someone _hurt_. Like, _a lot_. She was pretty sure she split a knuckle on his cheekbone, pretty much immediately. _Ow._

-Secondly, she was tackled to the ground, which also hurt a lot, by a bulky man she had not previously noticed. Her arms were pinned, and a knee was laid into her back.

-Tony Stark began yelling nonsensical things, like “The _fuck?”_ and “Who?” and “JARVIS!” and “Rhodey!” and “JARVIS!” again.

-The man on top of her said, “Got it under control, boss,” in a clipped tone of voice.

-Darcy couldn’t exactly get a good view of the proceedings from her vantage point of being smashed into the ground, but she managed to twist her head up to get a split second view of the woman, who was looking at her in a way that made her suddenly feel very afraid.

-“Sir,” JARVIS intoned, “Ms. Darcy Lewis has clearance for this floor of the tower.”

-“Clearance!” Stark sputtered, “Forget clearance! How does she have it! Why did she do it! Who is she? My face! _My face!_ ”

-“Tony,” said the woman, quiet and forceful, “I think your looks are spared. Let Happy handle it.”

And things became a bit of a blur after that. But unfortunately, they really didn’t.

What did happen after that was she was wrestled unceremoniously into a chair and held while the three people argued heatedly over who would get to talk to her. Tony Stark, who she had just _punched in the goddamn face_ (oh god, it was really hitting her now), kept insisting that he was going to put on the suit. Darcy felt a bit sick. Her rage haze was oozing away.

Finally, the woman, who could be none other than Pepper Potts, stopped Stark from putting on the suit, and spoke to Darcy herself, which Darcy was convinced that was probably way worse than being interrogated by Iron Man. The rage had drained away, leaving her very bruised, but still indignant.

“You just put her in a lab and _left her there!_ What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know who she is? Thor didn’t even say _goodbye_ , and then you tell her that she’s the only way to build a bridge back and you put her in a room with _just herself, not even Erik,_ and you leave her there. She probably hasn’t left it in three weeks , she probably hasn’t eaten,  don’t you understand the _pressure?_ ”

She babbled with hot, angry tears streaming down her cheeks, hating herself for crying in front of Tony Stark, even for Jane, and hating Tony Stark for seeing her cry.

Pepper Pots leaned over and briskly and efficiently wiped her tears away with a handkerchief that smelled like cloves. Behind her, Tony Stark pinched the bridge of his nose abruptly and turned away. When he spoke, his voice is low. “I was never going to leave her there. The Einstein-Rosen bridge was next on my to-do list, I just had to you know, rebuild the Tower, fix the city, super-hero—“

“Tony.” Pepper’s voice cut like a knife, and Darcy was glad it’s not directed at her. Stark’s shoulders slumped.

“ _Thor never even said goodbye_ ,” Darcy said, her voice raw.

There was a pause. Tony Stark turned to her, and spread his hands wide. “What can I do to make it better?” he said, expansively. “Seriously, tell me. It’s yours. Like, anything you like. Hey, would she like a pony?”

Darcy shook her head, and the man behind her released her on some kind of unspoken signal. Her arms tingled, then exploded back into pain.

“This is a pretty good offer,” Tony Stark informed her, “I mean it. I think this could be the one in only time that someone who has punched me gets free reign. Only, if she’s gonna sock me too, I call dibs on being in the suit.” He rubbed his cheek gingerly, and made the kind of hiss that Darcy was sure was modeled on cowboys in Old West movies, all macho and all show. It almost brought a smile to her face. Almost. “You got a mean right hook on you,” he said ruefully.

“Nothing. Right now. You hired me, which is a good start, and I’ll save the rest of the favor for the future. Just don’t make the same mistake again.”

She got to her feet, and almost missed the look that Pepper shot Stark. “Sorry,” he said, sounding his teeth were being pulled. Then he winced. “Really,” he added sincerely.

Darcy decided to throw the guy a bone. After all, it couldn’t have been the best day for him either. Totally punched in the face, and seriously, _seriously_ whipped by his girlfriend. “Scientists,” she said expansively, “Can’t live with ‘em.”

“Don’t I know it,” the bulky man said feelingly behind her, and she had just enough time to hear Tony Stark chuckle lowly before the elevator doors closed again.

\--

“Ms. Darcy,” JARVIS said helpfully, echoing a bit in the largeness of the lab, “I believe it would be best if you were to report to the Medical floor.”

“There’s no time for that,” Darcy said distractedly.

“Ms. Darcy,” JARVIS said, more forcefully, “Mr. Stark has informed me that proper care must be taken of yourself and Dr. Foster. I believe avoiding a repeat of previous incident is utmost in his mind—“

“Shh..” Darcy said distractedly, trying to just _think_. There had to be something she could do. Maybe something Jane said—that could clue her in on what could be moved and what—

A sad little sign flashed in her mind, typed neatly and slotted into the name plate of the lab two doors down, as if someone wasn’t planning on being there very long. _B. Banner_ , the sign said.

“JARVIS,” she said slowly, “Dr. Banner. He is an MD, no?”

“Yes,” the program said, “but Dr. Banner has a strict, do-not-disturb protocol set in place on his lab, and I must ask that you respect—“

“And his PhD was in physics?”

“Yes, but I really must insist that you visit the Medical floor where _proper_ attention can be given—“

“Thanks JARVIS,” she said, already out the door. _Two birds with one stone_. “You’re a peach.”

Darcy rapped on the door to his lab authoritatively, and then winced. She really needed to stop forgetting the hand thing.

The door opened, and Dr. Banner blinked out at her with the same, coming-back-to-the-real-world look that she was so used to seeing on Erik and Jane. Then his gaze cleared as he took in the sight of her, which Darcy could admit was probably not her finest moment. In fact, she was pretty sure her sensible, professional, outfit was only fit for the garbage pile by now. Not that it had influenced her behavior at all throughout the day.

“Ms. Lewis, what—“ he opened the door wider and swallowed. “What on Earth happened? Is everything all right?”

She offered him her hand ruefully, “I kind of need your help. Tony Stark ran into me.”

“He _what_?” Dr. Banner moved aside slightly, and she shouldered her way into a lab that was much sparser, and much neater than Jane’s. “Sit down on that bench there. Hang on.”

“Yeah,” Darcy blew out a sigh, then turned and smiled widely at him over her shoulder. “His face totally ran into my hand.”

If she hadn’t been watching him, she would have missed it, but another smile flickered over his face, this time pausing long enough to almost settle into the curve of his mouth before he quirked it and it vanished. Darcy felt something knot in her chest. _Oh wow,_ she thought, and for two seconds felt giddy.

“I see,” he said instead, so dry that if she hadn’t seen the smile she would have thought he was totally serious, “and what prompted Tony to ram his face against your hand?”

She sung her legs idly back and forth. “He was being a dick to my boss.”

Dr. Banner returned with some bandages, and grabbed her hand in a decidedly businesslike way that convinced Darcy he didn’t go much in the way for human contact. “That sounds like Tony,” he said softly, and cleaned her hands so gently she didn’t even feel the sting of the alcohol. “Next time,” he said after a pause, not looking up at her at all, “you should probably go see Medical. Ask JARVIS—“

“No,” she interrupted, “I really couldn’t have.”

He glanced up at her, and she took the opportunity to smile wickedly. “For you see, I have an ulterior motive.”

Dr. Banner swallowed, his eyes darting like he was looking for an escape route. “And what would that be?” he said carefully.

“Promise me you’ll help me first.”

“Your body is going to be in quite a bit of pain tomorrow, but luckily no lasting damage. Here, take two of these when you need to.” He fished a bottle out of a drawer stuffed with them and pressed it into her hand. She tried not to think about why Dr. Bruce Banner had a drawer full of drugs including, but probably not limited to, T3s, so much that he was casually willing to pass them around.

“ _Promise_. For _Science.”_

His mouth quirked again, and the smile lasted even longer this time. She clenched her left hand into the side of the lab bench to refrain from reaching out and seeing if she could hold it onto his face. _Fuck_. “Well,” he said gravely, “if it’s for Science...”

\--

There was a silence.

Then, “I can see why you needed help.”

“Right _? Right?”_ Darcy gestured expansively at the mess of Jane’s lab. “Look at this! Weeks worth of work. When she gets crazy sleep-deprived, Jane stops working off of any sense of human logic or sanity, or even spatial relations, and I have no idea what to do!”

“Hmmm,” Dr. Banner knelt down and shifted a stack of papers experimentally, revealing what looked like a star map drawn in chalk on the ground.

“I already tried that!” Darcy said, aggrieved. “I _know_ Jane. A lot of this stuff is incredibly important in the order that it’s in, and a lot of it is important _where_ it’s in, only this time, I really can’t tell what is what.”

Dr. Banner squinted at a piece of paper.

“And Jane will wake up in twelve hours—well, nine and a half now, and I promised her I’d fix everything and—“ Darcy took a deep breath. “I had a _system_. But she went totally off book this time.”

“You do know that astrophysics is not quite the same as nuclear physics right?” Dr. Banner said mildly.

“I know you’re both working on the same thing! The Einstein-Rosen bridge!”

“But we are coming at it two different ways. I’m looking at mathematics, and quantum spacetime, black hole theory, whereas Dr. Foster here seems to be approaching it from a geographical, atmospheric—“

“But, you’re a genius. Say you’ll help me. _Please_.”

Dr. Banner stood slowly, and surveyed the room. “I’ll help you,” he said decisively.

She squealed, and clapped her hands, winced at the pain. “Oh you will _love_ my filing system.”

\--

It only took three hours to convince Dr. Banner to love her filing system. The rest of the time was spent with him sprawled on the ground, reading Jane’s notes and calling out ‘Bifrost’ and ‘Mythology’ and ‘Stars’, and Darcy putting things into color coded files that were kept in color coded storage cabinets. It was long, thankless work.

She swept up the broken glass, rescued the coffee pot from the hot plate (it had begun to boil dry and make ominous noises), and thanks to JARVIS, located a brand new coffee maker in a storage room on the same floor. Coffee she found in Jane’s room, as she tiptoed there. Jane was sprawled out ungracefully in bed, snoring and drooling both, still looking very tired, and not cute at all in the slightest. Darcy was overcome with a rush of affection for her friend, then gathered up an armful of food to take downstairs.

She made Dr. Banner a cup of tea without even needing to ask him. He was definitely an herbal tea kind of guy. He sipped in distractedly, made a face at its heat or taste, she wasn’t sure, and gestured vaguely at her with the cup. “Milk and sugar please,” he murmured, frowning at the latest page of Jane’s notes.

Darcy suppressed her own grin as she went to adjust the good doctor’s cuppa. No doubt he would have been appalled to have demanded anything of her in normal circumstances, but four hours of being surrounded by the comical stylings of a madwoman had a way of breaking down boundaries. Darcy found that if she asked questions casually, around the filing, he could be tricked into divulging personal information.

Like, “I need to grab more green folders soon, Doc. Is that one also mythology, and where did you go to school?”

“No, it’s Bifrost, but she mentions Norse gods again...better put it in an orange one, just to be safe...I went to Berkley for my undergrad, Harvard grad school, but I taught at Culver.”

In similar fashion she learned that he had no siblings, liked dogs over cats, was an orphan, and that his favorite color was, go figure, green.

In the fifth hour the floor was cleared, and the extent of Jane’s crazy was revealed. She had covered a large portion of the floor with a star map, because apparently Google Stars wasn’t good enough for her. Dr. Banner squinted at it, and said that it looked like half of the stars weren’t in familiar conformations. The silly girl had drawn it in _chalk_ , though, and just breathing on it funny smudged it. Darcy sighed, and went off to rustle up some paint.

Hours six and seven were spent transfiguring the map to one of the empty walls. Dr. Banner was meticulous in his measurements, and was insistent on only transferring a true likeness. But Darcy was the one who brilliantly asked JARVIS to keep track of those things for them. The computer analyzed the map on the ground, and projected it onto the wall in two seconds flat, and smugly informed them that this way was far more accurate than what Dr. Banner had been trying to put together with a compass and string.

Because she was a humble soul, Darcy didn’t gloat about it. Much.

Dr. Banner had acquired a smidge of chalk on his cheek that his constant nervous worrying at his face and his hair never quite managed to dislodge. Darcy itched to wipe it off herself, but was smart enough to realize hastily that she didn’t want to spook him anymore than he already was. Besides, she had had more than enough of him flinching away from her.

In hour eight though, Darcy found she stopped caring, and wiped the smudge away with a thumb as they were knelt on the ground, scrubbing away the chalk. Dr. Banner flinched under her hand, as she knew he would, but she couldn’t decide if it was the exhaustion or the camaraderie, because he then stilled. She threw caution to the wind and grabbed his chin determinedly, turning his face to hers to look for more errant smears. He very purposefully did not look her in the eyes.

She found another bit above his right eyebrow, and Darcy swiped at it slowly, purposefully taking longer than she needed, making a point. He looked at her after, his eyes flicking once over her face quickly. His lips twisted into a small smile, and she realized she could feel the movement of the muscles in his jaw. She dropped his chin. “You have a bit too,” he confessed, “on your,” he raised his fingers to his forehead.

Darcy blushed hotly, and began scrubbing at her face with a sleeve. “Shit, that’s embarrassing,” she laughed weakly. “Did I get it?”

He shook his head, that small smile still tucked at his mouth, and reached to her hesitantly.

Bruce Banner touched her like he was waiting for her to wake up, all hesitation , all nervousness. He touched her like he was pretty sure she were going to scream at any moment, and that was okay. Go ahead. He was used to it. He touched her like a doctor, like telling himself that was the only thing that could make it bearable. His thumb was gentle, but purposefully, as he swiped lightly at her hairline, once, and again. Darcy found she was holding her breath.

Hour nine was spent with Darcy cooking busily, trying to scrounge something together with a toaster oven, hot plate, and a small pan she had snagged from Jane’s room. Dr. Banner was curled up in the corner, around his latest mug of tea, not quite asleep, but getting there.

Somewhere in hour six the sun must have risen.

They ate leaning their back against a countertop, sitting not quite close enough to ever touch, but their shoulders were only inches apart. Dr. Banner had the pan balanced on the floor, and Darcy was using the tray from one of the toaster ovens. They were both shovelling the food into their mouths with their fingers, and before it had cooled down enough, they had used pencils fashioned into clumsy chop sticks. Darcy, in all her infinite wisdom, had neglected to grab cutlery or plates, and neither of them had the energy to go get any now.

The lab was clean. The lab was _organized_.

Darcy leaned back contentedly. “Dr. Banner,” she said feelingly, “ _Thank you_.”

He smiled at her again. “It was my pleasure, Ms. Lewis.”

She frowned at him. “No. None of that. In the last fifteen hours you’ve seen me yell at an elevator, tended to my wounds, learned to read Jane’s writing, and pulled an all nighter. That _at least_ gets you first name basis. Call me Darcy.”

She stuck out her hand for the third time. He looked at it, then her, and still smiling, put his hand in hers. “Call me Bruce, then,” he suggested, and then looked like he immediately regretted it. Darcy wasn’t gonna have any of that though, and she pumped his hand warmly.

Their hands were both sticky with food, and they realized that the same moment, gave each other twin looks of mortification, and dropped the handshake. She leaned her head back and laughed warmly, and was thrilled to hear a low chuckle that seemed to be coming from Bruce’s direction. She didn’t turn her head to check though, certain that like an eclipse, she shouldn’t look directly at it.

_He has a nice laugh_ , she thought giddily, sure it was just the sleep deprivation talking.

From their seat she had a clear view of the other mural adorning Jane’s wall. By wordless consent neither of them had so much as touched it. It was a huge tree, with a large expanse tangled roots, and tangled branches that had a kind of symmetry, so that the top of it seemed to be planted in the stars. Bruce had said nothing about it except, again, that the stars didn’t seem to be in familiar configurations.

“What do you think that is, Bruce?” she breathed.

“Yggdrasil,” a tired voice said from behind them, and above. They both turned at the same time to see Jane, who to her credit, was at least dressed in different clothes from yesterday, “Yggdrasil, the world tree. I had a dream I saw its roots.” Her eyes were far and away, looking at things not of this world.

Darcy shivered, and then the moment, if it could be called that, passed. Jane woke up fully, sniffed, and said hopefully, “Do I smell waffles?”

Darcy surged to her feet. “Out,” she said, pushing the remains of her tray at Jane. Jane, who was pretty cool and pretty gross at the same time, immediately began to shovel the food into her mouth with her fingers. “Out, and back to bed. Your lab is fine. Everything is fine. You need to go back to bed.” She wrinkled her nose. “No wait, shower, then bed. And food. C’mon.”

She began to push Jane out, who was pliant in her hunger. Bruce loped up behind them, still clutching his pan. “You,” she said meaningfully, “you go to bed too. C’mon.” She made a grab at his wrist with her free hand.

He chuckled again, and Darcy froze. _Not an eclipse then_ , she thought. Jane looked up from her food, stopped in the hall and still eating. “Darce?”

_Definitely the sleep deprivation_.

\--

When she woke up in the late afternoon, sprawled out on Jane’s couch, true to Bruce’s word, she was sore all over, all her limbs stiff, her body aching in very intimate ways.

She popped some pills, dragged herself to Jane’s shower, and twenty minutes later was feeling human enough to want to bless Tony Stark’s billions, that he had apparently seen fit to grace the Tower with a nigh infinite supply of hot water.

Jane was not in residence, but now that she was human again Darcy felt safe in leaving her alone for a bit. Darcy began to examine the state of the art kitchen that Jane had definitely never even touched.

Two hours later she was dressed in an old plaid shirt of Jane’s and a stretchy pair of shorts she had found, probably the only things in her closet that would fit Darcy, and rapped authoritatively again at Bruce’s lab.

He poked his head out, looking better after a day’s rest of his own and a shower, and she shoved a paper bag in his face. “Eat these,” she commanded. “I mean it.”

He took it from her. “Yes, okay,” he said obediently.

“I’ll be checking on you later.”

It wasn’t until she reached Jane’s lab that she heard his belated, “Thanks.”

Jane was prowling through her nice and new files, a small frown on her face.

“Hey Boss!” Darcy said brightly, “I made muffins!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Apparently the internet works in mysterious ways, because I decided to write this not just because apparently everyone needs to know how much two characters who never met should totally get together, but also because it is an exercise on long form...we'll see how it goes?  
> -Title and lyrics from Aimee Mann's "Deathly".


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, totally overwhelmed by the positive response guys! Hope I live up to the high expectations.

**Chapter Two**

_Cause I can’t afford to_

_Climb aboard you—_

_No one’s got_

_That much ego to spend_

\--

 Her life settled into a norm she hadn’t thought possible, which involved waking up in her shit apartment at a godforsaken hour, riding the subway with her patented _don’t fuck with me_ face on, and dragging Jane out of bed. Or, more likely, finding Jane’s bed empty. She’d pick up breakfast on the way, or made something from a Tumblr recipe she had found the day before, dug Jane out from her work, and forced her to eat said something. Her days in New Mexico used to be spent transcribing Jane’s handwritten work into computer files, but Darcy discovered that JARVIS had a much better script-to-text function, after it learned Jane’s writing. He even scanned in her drawings, and her scribbling in the margins.

The other scientists on the floor were quiet. She only saw them for brief moments of time, since they rode the work elevators rather than the residential one, which Darcy could only assume were devoid of hilarity. They were mostly somber and in their late middle ages, and only their lab assistants tended to squeak hellos to Darcy. She only ever really interacted with Dr. Lee, who bordered Jane’s lab, if by ‘interacted’ you meant ‘quailing under his disapproving gaze’.

So Darcy was left with a lot of Facebook time. She became a good judge of when Jane could be left alone in the lab for a bit, when she didn’t need Darcy to be a sounding board, albeit one that just nodded and smiled and looked pretty, and disappeared up the Tower to make lunch. It took her longer than it would have in New Mexico, not in small part due to the sheer joy of working with Tony Stark’s top-of-the-line-and-occasionally-AI kitchen appliances, but also because not only was Bruce Banner a vegetarian, but he could also put away a _ton_ when he was eating.

Darcy came from the kind of family that solved all its problems, no matter how big or world weary, with good food, and she had the figure to prove it. Just because she was living in Manhattan, and technically a member of a super secret government organization didn’t meant that had to change. And Bruce always looked so grateful whenever she brought him food. It was like trying to tame a stray dog.

He had never actually said that he enjoyed her cooking, _per se_ , but it only took two days for Darcy to convince him to take his meals in Jane’s lab. He’d show up like clockwork at noon, and wander in a few minutes after Darcy showed up for breakfast, and stagger in sometime between the hours of six and eight for dinner. He always knocked hesitantly. At first Darcy would smile widely, and greet him loudly, but then took to just nodding at him, and gesturing to his plate. Bruce seemed to like that better. She filed it away.

It was good to get him out, she kept telling herself. He totally looked like the same type as Jane, who wouldn’t eat or sleep if he was on the verge of a breakthrough. After all, he had been crazy enough to test his super experimental treatment _on himself_. Before she met Jane, Darcy would have classified as _totally fucking bonkers_. Now she was a little afraid to discover she considered it par for the course.

And he was a much better sounding board. Jane tended to mutter to herself when she was on a roll, and leave significant pauses where she wanted someone to fill in. Darcy would usually oblige with an “Uh huh,” or “Sounds great, Boss!” or, “If you say so,” but Bruce and Jane could actually have _conversations_.

Granted, they all started with him clearing his throat and saying, “Well nuclear physics is _not quite_ the same as astrophysics, but it seems to me...” or “I don’t know if this will be helpful or not but...”

One time Darcy had even looked up from her Facebook page to see Jane gesturing vehemently with her chopsticks, saying, “No! You’re forgetting Dr. Rosen’s work on singularities. Nothing larger than an electron—“

“Not forgetting,” Bruce had interrupted, running his hands through his hair, “just that it’s _irrelevant_ at this juncture. You’re forgetting that his postulations were based on _theory_ only. We have a goal, a location; it is only a matter of working backwards—“

 _Oh god_ , Darcy had thought, giddy, _they were actually_ arguing _._

(She had to give up feeding the other scientists though, after Dr. Lee had barged into Jane’s lab waving a bag of cookies and hissed at her that in a _proper_ lab, it was highly inappropriate, not to mention highly _dangerous_ to bring and consume food. He would appreciate it if she would cease from bothering his lab assistants as well as his sterile work environment in the future.

He had even slammed the door on his way out.

“Geez,” Darcy had complained, retrieving the bag of cookies from where Dr. Lee had thrown them in the middle of his monologue and munching on one, “what crawled up his ass and died?”

Jane had only frowned absentmindedly, reaching a hand out for a cookie herself. “Biologists,” she had said with a shrug.)

On Friday Darcy even managed to drag Jane out of the tower and into a bar, the two of them getting so rip-roaringly drunk that Darcy kept expecting to see Erik stare at her disapprovingly from a corner. In fact, they got so drunk that they might have started in a normal bar, but by the end of the night they had definitely moved to a bar of the more karaoke persuasion. After all, the prices of the drinks in this city were _ruining_. Jane didn’t sing much, but when she did, she did it enthusiastically. _Of course,_ Darcy thought, way too drunk to operate her camera phone and regretting every second of it, _that doesn’t mean she’s any good at it._

The next day she woke up feeling like hell, but it had been worth it, a hundred and ten per cent, to be able to see Jane laugh again, and let go of the pinched look she wore around her eyes.

On Monday, though, Tony Stark moved in, and Darcy’s fragile sense of peace was shattered.

\--

Darcy came in bearing bagels, and slank to her desk. It was quiet in the lab today, Jane poring over her notes, and Bruce, when he wandered in, did the same. Jane slathered cream cheese on only half her bagel before getting distracted by god knew what, and Darcy watched her take a bite of the plain side and frown, clearly at a loss about what had happened.

She was just getting up the energy to wonder if any of her friends in high school had done anything crazy lately when a banging sound came in from next door.

Jane and Bruce were both inclined to ignore it at first. Darcy was up and padding to the lab door, when a muffled _boom!_ filled the air.

Jane and Bruce both looked up at that, and Bruce jogged in front of Darcy. “Stay back,” he said with a frown, then disappeared into the corridor.

Darcy and Jane looked at each other. “Fuck that,” they both chorused at the same time, and ran after him.

They found Bruce standing in the doorway of the empty lab that had stood between his and Jane’s, his hands already buried in his hair. Darcy and Jane crowded behind him and tried to peer over his shoulder. The lab wasn’t empty anymore.

Tony Stark stood in the centre of it, half in his Iron Man suit, with one arm out, and the repulsor on the palm lit. In front of him the wall was scorched and blackened, but not visibly damaged. A cute robot thing crowded at his feet with what appeared to be a fire extinguisher aimed at his head.

“Tony...” Bruce said, exasperated.

Tony Stark turned around and smiled tightly at the assembled crowd. “Oh, hey guys, hot doctor lady, crazy, scary, assistant, Professor Hulk. Glad you could join me. Just testing the structural integrity of that wall, there. Not bad, though the place is a bit small...”

The robot chirped at Stark, tilted the top of itself to one side inquisitively, exactly like a person would with their head, pointed the fire extinguisher at Stark, then at the wall, then promptly sprayed Tony.

“Gah!” Stark said, flailing about in a very undignified manner, “No! Bad Dummy! Wrong spray!”

“Tony...” Bruce said again, “what are you doing?”

“Well,” Tony said with a grin, “It was brought to my attention that the work being completed on the Einstein-Rosen bridge was not progressing at a fast enough pace. Like, at all. So I figured it was about time that I stepped in to lend my considerable intellect to this undertaking.”

Darcy snorted loudly. The bruise she had landed on his cheek still hadn’t completely faded.

“Something you wanted to add?” Tony Stark called, and actually had the temerity to wiggle his eyebrows at her. “Only, if you were gonna punch me again, I want to remind you that I have guns now. Many, many guns.”

“You look completely ridiculous,” Darcy informed him. He really did. Foam ran off of him to puddle at his feet, and he was only in the suit up to the arc reactor.

“And _you_ look like a poor man’s sexcretary,” Stark returned smoothly, then held out a hand. “Truce?”

Darcy laughed. She had to give it to him; the rumors were true. Tony Stark was a completely infuriating individual, who at the same time never stopped being anything less than completely charming. “Truce,” she said, feeling slightly giddy at shaking Iron Man’s hand. The repulsor wasn’t even warm to the touch. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have a point. After the first day she hadn’t put on her sensible professional outfit once, but had instead opted for her normal wear, which tended to show a bit more cleavage. Was it her fault that any cleavage on her chest was automatically raised to obscene levels?

“Wait,” Jane said belatedly, “You’re helping now? But there is no joint project—Dr. Banner and I have been trying wholly different methods—“

“Then we must put our minds together,” Tony intoned solemnly, “for there is nothing that cannot be accomplished without... _teamwork_.”

Bruce laughed abruptly. “Well it probably can’t hurt to get another opinion...”

The three scientists crowded their way back to Jane’s workspace, Tony yanking off a gauntlet impatiently to get a look at Jane’s notes. Bruce grabbed another bit and Jane started pawing through the papers Bruce had brought to breakfast. There was silence for perhaps ten minutes, with the exception of a bit of throat clearing, muttered ‘huh’s and ‘hmmms’, then abruptly, the three of them all started to yell.

Darcy backed out of Jane’s lab as soon as she heard someone say the words “widely discredited”, and “how can you be so obtuse!” and back into Tony’s.

“It’s a bloodbath in there,” she told Dummy, who was still cradling the fire extinguisher. Spending four days in Stark Tower had made Darcy used to robots smarter than people, and she was not at all surprised to find Dummy tilting its head at her like it understood.

It held the fire extinguisher out to her hopefully. “Aw,” Darcy said, charmed in spite of herself, “That’s sweet, but it’s probably something they have to work out with the power of... _teamwork_.” Tony probably hadn’t actually built any speakers into the thing, but the mechanized whine of its hinges was highly variable, and at this moment, highly sympathetic sounding. She actually didn’t put it past Tony Stark to build a robot who had an entire obscure language that communicated using hinge squeaks.

“ _Ms._ Lewis,” Tony started, poking his head around the corner.

“Darcy,” Darcy said automatically, “Truce, remember?”

“Alas, that is what I thought,” Tony said dramatically, coming into full view. He held his hand up to his arc reactor in an overwrought manner, still mostly in the suit, “before you saw fit to wound me. Again. This time in the heart as well as the face.”

“What do you want?”

Tony immediately switched into full puppy dog mode. “Where is _my_ breakfast?”

Dummy held the fire extinguisher up again. Tony actually recoiled. “Don’t tell me you two have joined forces!”

Darcy laughed. “Next time, Dummy,” she said, patting its top on tiptoes, “We’ll get him next time.”

“So, breakfast?”

“Just this once. I’m not your slave.”

She jogged off with his “I only like three kinds of breakfast foods, have fun guessing which ones!” ringing in her ears, thinking that it was hard not to like the guy.

That was, of course, until he knocked down the walls.

\--

The next day she arrived, overladen with the muffins that she had baked, to find Jane pacing in the hall outside the elevator. “Darcy, you have to stop this,” she said, clutching at her arm before she was even fully out.

“What?” But she could see for herself. The corridor was filled with a haze of dust, and she could hear loud, rhythmic crashing. “What’s wrong?” Darcy dropped a bag of muffins and grabbed Jane in return, ready to drag her into the elevator and into safety, only to find herself being dragged in turn, down the hall.

The door to Bruce’s lab was open, and Bruce stood just inside of it, his hair dusted with grey from cement dust. Her hands itched to brush it off. “I just want to go on record as saying,” he said, deceptively calm, “that this is a very, very bad idea.”

“Noted,” Tony’s voice said, distorted, and strangely loud. Darcy saw why as soon as she peered in. Iron Man was standing in a pile of rubble, the repulsors on his hand whining and firing over and over into the wall that used to separate Bruce’s lab from Tony’s.

Squinting through the dust, Darcy thought she could make out the black and white of Jane’s star map. “Oh,” she said quietly.

“I too would like to go on the record,” JARVIS intoned, “This plan is most inadvisable. Dr. Lee has requested as well that the unacceptable noise level be brought to your attention.”

“Noted again,” he said, his voice strained.

Jane joggled Darcy’s arm. “Make him _stop_ ,” she hissed desperately.

“Tony!” Darcy yelled, “What the hell are you doing?”

“What do you think?”

“Of this _mess_?”

“No, Lewis,” Even with his voice coming out of speakers, Tony Stark was able to drip sarcasm. “Of my suit.”

“Uhhh...I’m sorry about your penis?”

Iron Man turned and looked at her. Darcy shivered. “Guns,” he reminded her. “Lots and lots of guns. And you can thank Pepper for making an honest man outta me” (Jane snorted loudly) “or else I’d whip said penis out right here and now. Then _you’d_ be sorry. Completely ruin you for other men.”

“Yeah, I kinda doubt that. By the way, why are you destroying everyone’s labs?”

“Not destroying, Darcy. _Creating._ I’m making the lab bigger, better. Kind of a super lab, if you will. Power of teamwork, remember?”

“What I _remember_ , is the three of you getting into a hissy fit, and saying mean things about each other’s mothers.”

(“His _mother_ ,” Jane whispered urgently, “is so fat she’s _red-shifted_.” Darcy patted her arm absently, acknowledging the burn).

“Yeah, but that’s how the Avengers started out too,” Iron Man said smugly. “You remember the Avengers, don’t you? Motley group of single-minded, scrappy individuals? Came together in the last minute? Saved the city from an alien war strike? Though, granted, that last one was mostly me, but hey, the rest of the guys were totally there in spirit and stuff.”

“Uh huh,” Darcy said. She highly doubted that Thor went around telling anyone their unsubstantiated claims were highly unlikely to be reproducible.

“I learned something from that event thing,” he continued, “That it’s better to work _with_ people, than to like, work without them. You know, united we stand, yada yada yada.”

“This is hardly the same situation,” Bruce said. Darcy was inclined to agree.

“But,” Iron Man said dolefully, “the My Little Ponies say that Friendship is Magic.”

Darcy smothered a laugh. Jane was unimpressed. She dug her nails into Darcy’s arm, and started to emit a kind of whine that meant she was very, very unstable.

“Tony,” Darcy said, when her voice was under control again, “I’m going to have to ask you to stop this.”

“Sure thing,” he replied easily, “only I’m almost done, and I was totally planning on getting rid of this rubble too, but hey, if you want me to call it a day...”

He walked out of the mess and clapped Bruce on the back. Bruce staggered forward a step. “Want to take care of the mess for me, big guy?”

“No,” Bruce said peevishly, polishing his glasses, “I really wouldn’t.

“Look. Go out, get some fresh air or something. Come back one—no, two hours from now. If you really hate it, I’ll put everything back the way it was. I swear.”

Jane _humphed_. Darcy grabbed her arm, and then snagged Bruce’s for good measure. She pulled them both out with her, as the whine, _boom_ of the repulsors started again. “Don’t touch my walls!” Jane called belatedly.

“Don’t worry,” said Iron Man, “Your crazy person cave drawings— _I mean_ research aids—are totally safe.”

Something bumped into Darcy’s shoulder. Dummy was keeping pace, dejection in every line of its robot body. “Don’t tell me you got kicked out too?” Darcy let go of Jane to pat its head. (Jane immediately lunged back, probably intent on fighting Iron Man with the power of only her mind or something. Darcy was able to grab her again fairly easily.)

“And don’t make friends with that robot!”

“Well,” Darcy said pragmatically, “Since my muffins are ruined, what say the four of us go upstairs and I’ll make pancakes?”

\--

When they returned, Jane and Bruce did so as defeated soldiers, being led into the enemy camp. Tony Stark stood in the middle of the new Super Lab (Darcy wasn’t even kidding, the new plaque was already outside of the door, _B. Banner_ nowhere in sight) and grinned cockily at them. The place was certainly spacious. Tony had not only managed to knock down the walls and give the place a good clean, but had also seemed to have moved Bruce’s notes, and cleared out a space for him to work, with computer surfaces and everything. Most of what looked to be a disassembled car motor was already heaped in the corner.

“Well?”

Jane and Bruce looked at him, and then at each other. As one, they chorused dully, “I don’t hate it,” and plodded to their corners and got to back to work.

Darcy suspected it was just to put off any more delays in their research, not any actual approval of the Super Lab, and opened her mouth to say something. Tony was smirking at her. He wasn’t even in the suit, that was how sure of himself he was.

“You always get your way, don’t you?” Darcy said instead.

Tony’s mouth quirked. “Oh, absolutely.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -While this work is starting out light and (hopefully) funny, I am intending it to be a (somewhat) serious examination of what actually falling for Bruce Banner and The Hulk could entail. So while it's light now, it will probably get a bit darker in the future. Just a fair warning?


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

_So don’t work your stuff._

_Because I’ve got troubles enough._

_No, don’t pick on me_

_When one act of kindness could be deathly (definitely)_

\--                                        

“I’m sure you know why you’re here,” Maria Hill said calmly from behind her imposing desk.

“Um,” Darcy fidgeted. She had fidgeted all night long, after reading the email requesting a “short briefing meeting”, had fidgeted on the subway ride here, back in her seriously wrinkled professional outfit, and had fidgeted all through SHIELD headquarters. In fact she looked so ill at ease she was surprised no one stopped her at security. Though they were probably just letting Agent Hill finish the job. “Is it the Facebook? Because I’m really starting to cut back on that. I mean there’s hardly as much time now as there used to be and Tony and Bruce said they really don’t mind and I don’t think Jane cares as long as I continue to not post the pictures of us from that cowboy bar that one time—“

Agent Hill held up one hand. “No, Ms. Lewis,” she said slowly, “It’s not the Facebook usage.”

“Dr. Lee then? I know he’s been throwing fits about the noise level but Tony—Mr. Stark says that he’s got it under control.”

“Ms. Lewis,” Agent Hill sounded faintly disapproving. “I’m sure you’re aware that Mr. Stark’s personnel problems are not a SHIELD concern.”

“Oh.” Darcy slumped, abruptly remembered where she was, and straightened again. “Then...”

Agent Hill sighed. “There have been some recent changes in Dr. Foster’s lab...” she prompted gently.

“Oh!” This, Darcy could handle.

It had been beyond awful at first. Tony turned out to be the type who blasted classic rock at a thousand decibels while he was working, and didn’t need much (read: any) persuasion at all to sing along just as loudly. He built machines, genius things, out of scrap metal and random parts, and they all worked perfectly, and all seemed to do nothing important at all. They ranged in size from cat like creatures he had cobbled together from an old keyboard that stalked the room on antennae feet and whose keys clicked constantly to machines the size of her palm, intricate messes of cogs and gears that whirred and clicked in intricate, dizzying ways. They were never scary though. Darcy always looked at them with a kind of pity. Tony Stark would bring a robot to life from nothing, give it some vestige of JARVIS’ AI system, and leave it to fend for itself and turn the bright beam of his genius to the next thing. They all floundered around the lab aimlessly, and seemed so lonely somehow.

Tony seemed to need to keep his hands moving, but was easily distracted and would often leave unfinished piles of useless robot lying around to move onto whatever was next, only to return to the pile hours, maybe days later to bring it to life. Once it was alive, though, Tony always seemed to forget about it immediately, and thus had a little army of bots that seemed to have nothing better to do than follow everyone around and get in their way. Whenever the inevitable happened and Jane or Darcy stepped on one by mistake though, Tony would instantly stop whatever meaningless task he was doing to stoop and reshape its body, coaxing life back into the robot with spare parts and duct tape. When Darcy finally said something to him, he muttered something incoherent about an army to do his bidding and she had promptly dropped the subject.

Jane muttered and pinned things to walls, and since so much of the walls were so far away now, kept tripping over Tony’s scattered machine parts and robots. Her eyes were always focused on something far away and in the distance, even when she was bent over her notes. Whenever Darcy spoke to her, it would take her a few seconds to retreat back into herself from wherever she was and look her in the eyes.

Bruce seemed to work best in perfect silence, covered sheets of paper with cramped notes, and didn’t look like he was moving at all when he was working. He’d staked out a corner of the Super Lab, and seemed to both be actively trying to stay as out of everyone’s way in the giant yawning laboratory, and wholly focused on his work. Most of Tony’s army adored him, and as soon as he sat down at his chair they would crawl out from the corners and dark spaces and piles of each other they had hidden themselves away in by ones and twos to press themselves against him instead. In half an hour Bruce was invariably covered in them, and they constantly dropped off whenever he moved and then immediately crawled back on when he stopped. Darcy hadn’t thought he had noticed until she caught him stroking one on its body, absentmindedly, one particularly late night. It was both cute and mildly disturbing.

Darcy had spent most of the first few days hovering around Jane, ready to guide her around Tony’s Franken-messes the way you would a blindfolded friend, and making furtive signals to JARVIS to cut the noise whenever Tony had his back turned.

The jarring silences when JARVIS had obeyed were almost worse than the music, since it only lasted minutes before Tony had the rock and roll back on, usually at an even louder volume since Tony Stark was many things, and among the top of the list lay _petty_. Also, this was usually when he punished everyone by singing.

It had taken a whole week for them to figure out a way to work together in some semblance of peace, (“It only took the Avengers one day,” Bruce had said to Darcy slyly) Jane lifting her nose in the air and declaring herself fine with the noise level if Tony kept out of her way, and Bruce only ever saying mildly that he didn’t mind it at all, no matter how hard Darcy pressed him. She found out on the third day that he just wore ear plugs, and when he was into his work tuned everything out anyway. The fifth day was when Jane finally developed her peripheral vision enough to not need Darcy to be her seeing eye dog.

Not that it got much better after that. Tony had turned out to be a black hole of a man, in that he pulled everyone in around him. His charisma was like a dying sun, pulling everything around him in inexorably, so that when he turned his intense gaze on you it felt exhilarating. Tony Stark was the master of looking at things from outside the box. Within the first three hours of working around him Darcy was by turns convinced of how he was able to build a fully functioning, weaponized suit of armour that _flew_ out of scrap metal in the middle of the desert, dwarfed by his genius, in complete awe of him, and thoroughly convinced that what Tony Stark needed most was to be punched in the face a few more times. His robot creations who only ever seemed to have the most basic level of intelligence and mostly acted like giant lizards (headed to light and spent most of the day immobile and basking) never spent very much time around their creator. Darcy didn’t blame them. Being around Tony was a stressful business.

 Simply put, after he showed up, it became almost impossible for the scientists to give up working. Jane seemed personally insulted at the thought of someone better at science than she was, and would often spend hours absorbed in research just to come up with a single reference to refute a theory that Tony had made up off the top of his head, or the best science burn. Bruce had seemed tentative about getting involved in Jane and Tony’s shouting matches at first until he began to offer his own opinions in their fuming silences. This happened more and more often until Darcy began to catch him smiling to himself as he scribbled silently on another page of calculations, in his own quiet attempt at asserting his intelligence. She realized with a start that Bruce Banner worked best in a team, and was simply coming back into his own after lord knew how long of working alone.

Darcy had been spending her time gently cajoling each of them that it was time to eat, and to finish eating whenever they would take a bite of their sandwich then promptly forgot it to go back to whatever it was they were doing. She had to leap in to break up their spats on a daily basis, and soon was able to recognize the moment a conversation turned from the polite murmur of geniuses sharing their minds to the catty murmur of geniuses making fun of each other. Darcy was not at her best with ‘gentle cajoling’ though, and by day two her ‘gentle reminders’ had turned to ‘gentle threats’ with ‘gentle insults’ sprinkled liberally throughout. It only took another two days for that to be transmogrified into ‘overt threats and scathing insults, with a side helping of ruthless bullying’.

(“By the way,” she had said casually one day, bringing Tony a cup of coffee, “I never did thank you for that Welcome Wagon trick you pulled on me in the elevator.”

Tony had promptly choked on his cup, his eyes wide and scared. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Nothing,” she’d said innocently, then a beat. “Yet.”

“ _Ms._ Lewis, is that a threat?” Really, Tony would have had a much better chance of pulling off arch and catty if his hand wasn’t so busy trembling.

“Oh, I wasn’t making a threat.” To his credit, Tony didn’t relax one bit. “I was making a promise.”)

And getting them to leave the lab? Forget about it. Bullying and begging had no effect on them. She resorted most days to asking JARVIS to turn off the lights, (Tony invariably would spend his time to then build a machine capable only of turning on the light, Darcy would confiscate it, and he would begin building again—enough cycles of this was usually enough for him to begrudgingly call it a day) or using Dummy’s beloved fire extinguisher. After awhile, it got to the point where she only had to brandish it for them to hop to smartly.

About the only friend she had, in fact, was Dummy. She had found out the first day that in the same way that Bruce had acquired dozens of motley machines, Dummy had adopted her. The robot greeted her in the lobby of Stark Tower sometimes, though she did wonder how he managed to work the elevators, and helped her carry her things, and generally followed her around, helping her steady Jane, or poking Bruce when she was trying to talk to him so he would pay attention, and doing a thousand little things that she didn’t think a giant mechanized arm on a wheelie stand would be capable of. She loved Dummy, partly because it made her life so much easier, and partly because it was _nice_ and thoughtful in a way that she was pretty sure was all Tony Stark, underneath the thousand layers of iron (titanium-gold alloy) that he had built over his heart. Plus, it gave Tony sporadic hissy fits to see the two of them together, as thoroughly convinced as he was that they were plotting against him.

 “I mean,” she finished summarizing to Agent Hill now, “Tony is a bit of an ass, but he’s always a bit of an ass, right? And they’re working together now, more or less. They have even started to construct something real.”

That something real was the gate. “Booty Call Bridge,” Bruce had said slyly, in a low tone that he no doubt assumed nobody would hear, but Darcy and Tony had both heard him, and loved it. Jane had flushed with embarrassment and anger, but hadn’t tried to deny it. It was just bare bones now, a pedestal and a ring Tony was scratching out of wire, but it was a _start_.

“Are you guys really working together?” she had asked Bruce one day as she was making sure he ate his lunch.

Bruce had looked up from glowing panel of notes (Tony had finally convinced him to switch from paper and pen to JARVIS, though he had had no similar luck with Jane) and smiled at Darcy. She grinned back happily. “It might not look like much,” he had admitted, “but it’s all parts to a whole. Tony is working on the physical _gate_ part of it, I’m trying to tackle the theory behind the mechanisms of faster than light travel, and Dr. Foster—“

“Dr. Foster is working on the _magic_ ,” Tony had called out from behind them, wiggling his fingers suggestively, his other hand buried in something he kept threatening to call Dummy 2.0.

“I can’t believe I was ever in awe of you,” Darcy had retorted.

Tony had draped an oil covered around her shoulders and drawled back, “My dear, I don’t believe you ever _were_.”

The dynamic wasn’t perfect, of course. It had only taken a few days for Darcy to notice that Bruce had a habit of always keeping an exit to a room within sight at all times, as if he was going to be needing to leave in a hurry. (SHIELD basic training was eccentric, but thorough, and that exit thing was no joke). He never fully relaxed, and if after a full eighteen hours of work where even Tony was starting to droop at the bench Darcy touched his shoulder to get his attention his muscles would still be tight under her hand.

And she had sort of discovered what was up with the drawer full of drugs. It was all for him. She had noticed him swallowing pills from different bottles at different times, slipping them into his mouth slyly and chewing quickly. What she had thought at first to be aspirin for the headache that was Tony Stark was quickly proved to be something a lot worse. In fact, Bruce seemed to be taking a complicated mixture of uppers and downers whenever he thought nobody was looking.

They had all noticed it though, Jane giving Darcy worried looks, Darcy striding over to paw her way through his stash whenever he wasn’t in the room, and Tony sighing deeply. “Look,” he had said once to Darcy, while Bruce was in the shower and she was squinting at a label to Google later, “it was enough of a battle to get him back into Manhattan at all. He’s a doctor. He knows what he’s doing.”

Darcy tended to very much doubt that. It was true Bruce was clearly a brilliant man, but in the people department, specifically _himself_ , he was very sorely lacking. “And I’m sure the last time he said that was right before he infected himself with enough gamma radiation to kill himself ten times over,” she had retorted hotly, but had stopped going into his drug drawer. If Tony Stark, arguably Bruce’s closest friend, could trust him not to fuck himself up she didn’t see how she could step in and intervene. That didn’t mean she had to like it though.

If Darcy couldn’t make him stop taking drugs, the least she could do was try to make him realize they weren’t needed. She made sure to bug him whenever she got a chance, making sure he ate, drank his tea, and found that when he was in the right state of mind, he could even hold a conversation while working.

To her delight she learned that Bruce was funny, in a sly, depreciating kind of way. He was the type who occasionally threw out snarky comments, sometimes about Tony, usually about himself, then looked horrified when she laughed at them. It took her a week to realize the horror was only mock horror, but...it’s just she never expected him to be funny too. She found herself looking forward to talking to him, just to hear the things he would say, and not just to nice him out of his misguided quest to find himself a monster.

Jane was difficult too. She varied wildly from being productive in a way highly reminiscent of New Mexico and being productive in a way that was highly crazy. Sometimes she would write notes about astral bodies and look through patterns of magnetic storms and particle data and be like the Jane Darcy used to know, a bit spacey, but super competent, and sometimes she would be off in her own head somewhere, and spend her time poring through books on Norse mythology, and sleeping with her eyes open, and adding new stars to her map on the wall, or new roots to her tree mural.

Darcy was inclined to blame Erik. She had no way of knowing if Jane had always been like this, but it was undeniable that Erik had been a stabilizing presence on her life. Both their lives. Erik was patient, and knew how to talk to Jane, and more importantly, _convince_ her of things in a way that Darcy knew her mixture of food bribery and empty threats wasn’t properly substituting for. She missed Erik, quite a bit, and not only because he was the only brilliant scientist she knew that also didn’t happen to be bag-of-cats _bonkers_. She had absolutely no idea what to do for Jane, and worried about her fruitlessly, adding to the list of things she worried about fruitlessly. If it got any longer she’d have to divide them up and worry in shifts.

But no one knew where Erik was. Well, more likely, Bruce and Tony probably knew where he was, but neither of them were telling.

(“Dr. Selvig is...still being debriefed, and will likely be unavailable for the foreseeable future,” was all Bruce had been willing to say on the subject, sounding his most dry and academic.

“Oh God.” Darcy had felt her throat start to close. “He’s not dead, is he? Give it to me straight. Doc. This isn’t some elaborate cover up, is it, ‘cause I’m in SHIELD, you know. I can take it.”

“ _Christ_.” Tony had less patience for her quailing. “Guy’s not dead. Don’t get your panties in a twist, Lewis.” And that had been all _he_ was willing to say on the subject, which was infinitely more surprising.  She could usually get Tony to crack with little to no effort, in no small part due to the fact that Tony Stark loved to gloat.)

And of course, there was Dr. Lee, who as Darcy had said truthfully to Agent Hill, was constantly complaining about the noise level, the weird smells, the little robots that sometimes made a break for it from the Super Lab and wandered into his, about their unprofessional work ethic, basically about everything and anything, in his annoyingly nasal, get-under-your-skin voice.

(“What does he even _do_?” Darcy had asked over lunch one day.

“Dr. Thomas Lee is one of the most brilliant cell biologists in the world,” Tony had said promptly, “and at the top of his field. Stark Industries is proud to announce that he will be joining our award-winning R&D department, headed up by yours truly, this fall. We are looking forward to his contributions to Stark Industries’ world famous bio-research solutions. No doubt Dr. Lee will be a great asset to the team.” It was no doubt the blurb that Pepper Potts had made him memorize for a press conference.

Jane only shrugged. Darcy sighed.

“Cancer research.” Bruce had said, surprising them all, “He’s working on a vaccine for cancer, using nanomites. Tony’s right, it really is groundbreaking stuff. I’ve been considering helping him out with it, after...Well. If he’d have me.”

“Only you,” Darcy said slowly, “would want to help Dr. Lee.”

“Guy’s the worst,” Tony agreed around his mouthful.

“Well, it’s important stuff,” Bruce said defensively. “And he’s not so bad. Just...His wife died of it. Cancer.”

“Or the nagging,” Jane said thoughtfully.)

 “I see from your browsing records that you have requested a number of files on Dr. Banner,” Agent Hill noted now, the very face of professionalism.

Darcy flinched. She would have rather been confronted with the Facebook.

After she had made them eat, and sleep, and herded them to the lab showers on occasion, she had a lot of free time on her hands. Granted, it was snatched when it could, and it was far less than even in New Mexico, but Darcy found that she could still reasonably say she liked her job.

She spent that time looking accessing SHIELD’s database, and looking up Bruce Banner’s records. She fully realized that it’s a huge invasion of privacy, moreso because the man was working generally not more than three feet from where she was looking up the details of his life, but she couldn’t help herself from wanting to know more.

She avoided anything pre-accident with studious zeal (she’s terrible, but not _that_ terrible) and what was left over with her basic level of clearance wasn’t much. She saw the same pictures that they showed during training, some news footage from the incident four years ago, a report by a general with the unlikely name of Thunderbolt Ross that was not very complimentary, and which also read like a who’s who handbook of incompetence.

The latest item was a report filed by an agent code-named Black Widow. Its gleanings were unusually sparse, even for SHIELD’s heavy handed censors.

_Made contact with Subject in [redacted]. Isolated Subject from excess civilians using [redacted]. Convinced Subject to join [redacted]. Subject appeared stable, under control. No appearance of Subject No. [redacted]: Hulk, The (Threat Level Red). No casualties. Mission a success. Rendezvous at [redacted]._

“Would you like to require a transfer?” To Darcy’s shock, Agent Hill sounded kind, and understanding. She hadn’t even been sure that was possible. “You can hand train your replacement, someone Dr. Foster will agree to work with, whatever you need. Working with Dr. Banner for two and a half months” ( _Has it been that long?_ Darcy thought incredulously) “can be a strain on even our best agents. There is no need for you to put yourself in a situation that you are not comfortable with.”

“No,” Darcy’s voice sounded hoarse and spoke before Agent Hill had even finished talking. _No that wasn’t what I want_. She gave Agent Hill her best Badass Stare. “No. Bru—Dr. Banner and I are fine. If anything, Jane and Tony are a thousand times worse... I don’t need a transfer, and he’s not a strain. The opposite really.”

Agent Hill stared at her for another few seconds, then shook her head once decisively. “Let us know when you change your mind,” she said, and Darcy felt a hot flash of anger at the _when_.

“In the meantime, since it looks like you are taking on duties outside of your current job description, we’ve updated your personnel file accordingly. The paperwork has been filled out on your behalf, and all we need is your signature.”

She pushed over a small stack of papers. Darcy skimmed through it unseeingly. _New job description: Personal research assistant to Banner, Bruce, AKA The Hulk; Foster, Jane; Stark, Tony, AKA Iron Man..._ “Wait,” she said slowly, “You called me in here...to change my _job title_?”

Maria Hill steepled her fingers and smiled at Darcy slowly. It was not a pleasant sight. “Why,” she said sweetly, “did you have something else to hide?”

Darcy clutched the paperwork. “But,” she sputtered, her mind grasping at straws, “but...does that mean I get a raise?”

“Yes,” Agent Hill said crisply, “A very small one. Anything else, Lewis?”

Darcy scribbled her signature blindly. “So it’s official now?” she gulped.

Agent Hill looked at her with something akin to pity. “Yes, it’s official now.”

Darcy had to say something, _anything_ to get her to stop looking at her like that. “He’s...” she cleared her throat, then continued bravely, “He’s a good man.”

Maria Hill stared at her levelly. “I know,” she said slowly, “But he’s not always a man.”

\--

Not that anything really changed. Darcy was still doing the same shit she always was, only now she didn’t have the comforting notion that she was being selfless and going out of her way to do it, like a swearing Mother Theresa. And Agent Hill was right. The pay raise _was_ a very small one. Like so small that Darcy calculated in about a year she would be able to buy a pair of shoes with her ill-gotten gains. A pair of cheap shoes.

The only other thing of note was that a few days after her terrifying interview with Maria Hill, she had a terrifying interview with Pepper Potts.

The woman was even more glamorous than she had looked from Darcy’s previous vantage point of the floor, and made no bones about getting down to business.

“You once punched Tony,” she said, and Darcy wanted to sink into the floor.

“Um,” she said, wringing her hands in a way that she was certain she had picked up from Bruce, “That was just the once, and I was really mad at the time and—“

“No,” Pepper interrupted, “That’s good. Tony doesn’t need someone he can push around. He needs someone who can stand up to him. I expect that out of you.”

“Then I expect I’ll be punching him a lot more often.”

Pepper bit out a laugh that was just as cultured and professional as she looked, and stood up to walk Darcy to the door. “I’m sure you will, at that,” she said musingly, and gave Darcy a quick, mischievous smile that gave Darcy no doubt as to why Tony Stark had fallen in love with her.

So maybe it was the rush of giddiness of coming out of those two conversations alive, or the rush of having an official, expanded job title, but a few weeks later Darcy finally managed to work up the courage to confront Bruce.

He waited for her, occasionally, when she stayed behind in the lab to clean up after their messes. He made a pretense of helping her, stacking plates, crumpling up paper bags, helping her check the supply of file folders, and the box of spare scraps, but Darcy suspected that he was really doing it because he was a gentleman, and didn’t want her to walk down a scary hallway alone. On the 78th floor of Stark fucking Tower.

It was nice, though. They talked a bit, sometimes, and didn’t talk at all, sometimes, and if Darcy made a point of brushing their fingers together when he passed her something, or bumping him with her shoulders when she walked past him, well, he made a point of not flinching.

She had thought that the Super Lab dynamic had been good. She knew that she wasn’t the only one, since occasionally Tony would walk up to Jane or Bruce and companionably declare,” Wonder Twin Powers: Activate! Form of—“ they would usually laugh, and squirm out of his grasp, though once, memorably, Bruce had said, “Form of an icicle!” And punched Tony in the shoulder. Hard. Darcy had laughed so hard she thought she was going bust a lung, both of the absurdity of the good doctor’s working knowledge of the Wonder Twins, and the wounded, delighted expression on Tony’s face. “Wait,” she’d said suddenly, coming down to Earth, “does that make me Gleek?”

And while they still fought just as often as before, even Darcy could see that real progress was being made, even if it wasn’t fast enough for Jane’s liking.

But Bruce was still taking pills. More than he had before, too. Darcy had kept an eye on the mounting number of empty pill bottles, to the point where Bruce was now surreptitiously hiding them on his body, and even Tony was worried, though he predictably tried to hide it behind bluster. 

So finally, one night around three am, she waited until he handed her the last of the plates, then planted her hands on her hips. “C’mon Bruce,” she said, “What gives?”

He started, then looked around nervously. “What—“

“Don’t play dumb with me. You’re self medicating.”

He paused, and then his shoulders lifted as his mouth quirked with a vicious, self-deprecating smile. “Well,” he drawled sardonically, “I _am_ a doctor.”

“ _Bullshit_.” She was mad, she was a bit startled to realize. Scratch that. She was _livid_. “Not like this you’re not.  What are you even taking now?”

That bitter smile settled deeply onto his face, like it was being etched onto stone. “Whatever it takes.”

“But—“ she floundered for a bit. “But why? I’ve read your file—“ he flinched, “and it seems to me like you’ve got The H—the other guy under control!”

Bruce sighed, then ran his hand through his hair in a way that Darcy had learned meant his frustration, “It’s not that simple. This city...the last time I was here...”

 _“Harlem, 2008.”_ A dry, educational, voice rang through Darcy’s mind, along with choice bits of General Ross’s assessment: _Subject is extremely unstable, and a menace to society, as well as himself_.

“It’s just a place!” she yelled, frustrated, “it doesn’t change who you are, to come back to a place!”

A silence.

“There’s more pressure,” Bruce said finally, “being in a city full of people. More danger. If I were to—if the other guy were to make an appearance, it wouldn’t be pretty.”

Darcy rushed forward and rummaged through his pockets. She counted on his trademark reluctance for touching to be able to have enough time dig the bottle out, and she held it to the light. “ _Diazepam_?” she said, “You really think Valium is the key here, Bruce?”

He reached for it reflexively, and she held it behind herself, keeping her body between him and the bottle. He was close enough for her to hear his heartbeat, still even and slow, and for her to feel his breath on her cheek. She looked in his eyes searchingly.

“It’s not a very high dosage,” he said quietly, “I can’t afford to be stoned here, not once we’re getting closer. Too much and my mind goes, too little and the other guy gets...anxious. I’m being careful, Darcy. It’s just there’s...distractions.”

 _Like walking on a tightrope_ , she thought, _with tigers and bears (oh my) waiting to get you beneath_. For the first time, she thought she might have a sense of what it was like to be him.

Darcy reached out a hand, and placed it gently, deliberately, on his hip. He closed his eyes, and tension radiated out of every line in his body for a moment before it drained out with the next breath that drifted over her face and her hair.

“Bruce,” Darcy said feelingly, “There is more to you than the other guy. There is more use to you than your brain. You are not just a weapon, or a mind.”

She curled her fingers around his hip, the lifted it up, traced his side through his shirt. They remained that way, in an almost embrace that somehow less and more intimate than a hug for a few moments more, before Bruce opened his eyes.

The sheer heartbreak and loneliness she saw in them was enough to make her gasp. “ _Aren’t I?”_ he said, then pulled away abruptly.

Darcy stood, clutching the bottle in one hand, wholly at a loss. He stood apart from her, his face buried in his hands. He looked strange to her, what was it—that’s right. It was the first time that Darcy could remember that he stood in the lab without a single one of Tony’s robots huddled around him.

“ _I_ _think you should go now_ ,” he said finally, and while his voice was still measured and calm, there was something deeper in it, an alien crack to his words that she had never heard before. It scared her in an almost primal way, in a way that he had never scared her before. It brooked no argument.  

She walked away from him, frustrated and hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -What with midterms and such, the update schedule of this may become a bit more sporadic in the foreseeable future :(


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, I lied. Here's a short update. This thing is rapidly turning into a _monster_ , ha ha, pun intended.

**Chapter Four**

_‘Cause I’m just a problem_

_For you to solve and_

_Watch dissolve in_

_The heat of your charm._

\--

It’s a bit awkward after that. Darcy had walked away from Stark Towers and crushed his pills to dust under her heel, then had tossed and turned in bed all night long, turning the conversation over and over in her head. To say she slept badly would be the kind of understatement that ran along the lines of _some out of towners visited New York a couple months ago_ , and the next morning when she showed up bearing breakfast wraps, he didn’t even look her in the eye.

The next few days are passed with Darcy in agony, by turns wondering if she should apologize, and wondering why he hadn’t yet. The problem was, she didn’t think she had anything to apologize for, and she could tell by the studied avoidance-in-the-workplace measures that Bruce was employing that he felt the same.

She also thought about that last thing he said to her. The way he said it, how in two seconds flat he had changed the entire atmosphere of the room, had gone from a sweet, absent minded guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly into something dangerous. That was frustrating as well. She didn’t _want_ to be scared of Bruce. She wanted to mock him gently, and laugh at his jokes, and watch him talk, watch him work, watch him smile. But, undeniably, that night underneath the anger she had felt a little fear. _Let us know when you change your mind_ , Agent Hill had said. It had been like being a rabbit, holed up in the room with a wolf. Only this wolf was a vegetarian. (This was usually when her mind ground to a halt, running useless metaphors and similes into the ground, still not sure how she felt). One thing she did know, Darcy Lewis did not give up.

But then there was some kind of break through. What kind, exactly, Darcy wasn’t sure. She was just returning to the lab with their lunch, a new veggie burger recipe she had wanted to try out and some beef ones as well, since Tony tended to complain like a petulant child when he didn’t eat enough meat, and walked in on the three of them huddled around the Bridge, murmuring excitedly. Tony’s army were mounded into a little circle around the three of them, robots scrabbling on each other’s backs like crabs. Something in the vestige of JARVIS Tony had imbued each of them with meant they were sensitive to mood changes, not that Darcy could blame them. Tony might be mercurial, but he and Jane were infectious.

Jane noticed her first. “We’ve figured it out,” she said, her eyes sparkling.

Darcy grinned so wide she felt her face would split. “Congratulations!”

“This calls for champagne!” Tony announced, “Lots and lots of champagne. JARVIS sound the alarms. Half days for everyone!”

“Sir,” JARVIS said reprovingly, “Miss Potts has asked me to remind you not to give the employees superfluous vacations.”

“Half days for some,” Tony amended grandly, still caught up in his magnanimous gesture, “champagne for others.”

“It was the world tree that did it,” Bruce said, just as excitedly, “if we view the roots as extensions of coordinates, and consider Midgard to be just one of nine possible solutions—“

“We know how to open the bridge!” Jane said, utterly delighted.

“Where’s that champagne at?”

Panels in the walls of the lab slid open, in a way that Darcy was certain they weren’t able to do before, and iced bottles of champagne slid out, one for each of them. Tony grabbed the nearest one, and popped the cork with casual familiarity. “Enough talk,” he said grandly. “It’s time to party.”

The robots moved towards another bottle _en masse_ and while Darcy was certain that champagne was not good for their parts, if Tony wasn’t making a move she probably shouldn’t. And who knew. It would be very much like Tony to have watched an errant episode of _Futurama_ and then created a whole line of robots fueled by alcohol, especially since he pretty much already was.

“Um,” said Bruce.

“I can’t believe we’ve never gotten drunk in this lab before,” Tony continued, oblivious, “In fact, that’s probably why it’s taken us so long to get anywhere. It’s like working on unconsecrated ground.”

“I want to finish the work,” Jane announced, at the same time that Bruce said, “I don’t drink.”

“Right. Now I remember why we’ve never gotten drunk in this lab before.” Tony draped an arm around Bruce and one around Jane, champagne running down the edge of the bottle and down his hand unabashedly. “C’mon guys, this is the good stuff. You deserve a little fun, let a little loose after all that hard work. We need to celebrate, for we have done the impossible. I mean, again, granted, but hey, all in a day’s work. JARVIS, get Pepper down here. Where’s Rhodey?”

“Colonel Rhodes is currently on military business in DC, sir.”

“Screw Rhodey then. That man never did know how to celebrate.”

Jane accepted a flute from Tony, a smile playing on her lips. “Well, if it’s the good stuff...”

“And you, Banner, you need to chill out. You know, let loose, have a little fun. I do my best work drunk you know. Where do you think I even came up with the idea for the Jericho? It might be a good idea for you to make a little mistake every once in awhile. It’s about time you all see how Tony Stark _parties_.”

Bruce’s eyes met Darcy’s then slid away. She felt her grin stiffen and become forced. “Well now these burgers are just feeling inadequate,” she announced brightly, “I’ve been meaning to try this cake recipe...”

“No.” Tony weaved over and handed her the champagne bottle. “I said party, and I mean party. Don’t leave me hanging here.”

“It’s a triple chocolate cake, Tony.”

Tony relented with what appeared to be a supreme act of will. “Okay,” he said, “but after that,” he jabbed two fingers towards his eyes, then Darcy’s, “You and me. Are going to get. Buck wild.”

Darcy laughed and looked at Dummy, who was still holding a plate of burgers. “What do you say,” she said, “you wanna hold my mixing bowl?”

Bruce turned puppy dog eyes towards her. Darcy melted a bit in spite of herself. “Could I come too?” he said timidly.

She took pity on him. He must really not want to see how Tony Stark partied. “Sure, doc. You can lick the bowl.”

“Nuh uh,” Tony                 said, “I told you I was going to teach you how to _strut_ , big man.”

Darcy bit back a laugh and headed back out, Tony’s voice calling out after her, “And after that, we get buck wild! Why isn’t there any music playing here?”

\--

Darcy returned in an hour and a half, holding up a large, gooey, if slightly lopsided cake. Dummy carried the plates, and was wearing an impromptu party hat that Darcy had fashioned out of a flour bag tied around his arm.

Music poured out of the lab, and down the hall she could see other workers poking their head out of their own labs in bewilderment.

“Ms. Lewis,” Dr. Lee started icily, “The noise level—“

“Gotcha,” Darcy said smoothly, “I’ll tell Tony to turn it down.”

She walked into the super lab, expecting to be greeted by at least Jane and Tony in the throes of celebration, only to find the two of them hunched over, Jane clutching a bottle of champagne, and Tony clutching what appeared to be a bottle of scotch, totally immobile.

Tony’s head was lying in Pepper Pott’s lap, and she appeared to be stroking his head and murmuring soothing things with an indulgent expression on her face. While Darcy watched, dumbfounded, Jane slid from her bench bonelessly to curl in the fetal position on the floor, still clutching her bottle to her middle. Bruce, was also slumped at a seat, picking at a burger listlessly, most of Tony’s army mounded underneath and around him. It was about as despondent as he got.

“What happened?” Darcy said, then realized at once no one had even heard her come in with the music so loud. “JARVIS?”

JARVIS promptly turned the music down. Tony stirred, lifted his head up slightly to look at her, then sank back down into Pepper’s lap with a groan.

“What happened? Is this how Tony Stark parties?”

“We are no longer partying,” Tony said, “we have moved on to drowning our sorrows.”

“But...” Darcy wrinkled her brow, “What happened to buck wild? I even brought cake.” She set it down at their bench.

“Cake,” Jane groaned, “Cake good.” She crawled up and stuck her whole hand into the side of the cake then started to suck at her handful listlessly. Dummy chirruped disapprovingly at her.

“They seem to have run into some kind of setback,” Pepper said, giving Darcy a wry kind of smile.

“In the last _hour_?” Tony reached out blindly and also grabbed a handful of the cake. He turned his body over with what appeared to be magnificent strength of will, and started to eat.

“Mr. Stark,” Pepper said firmly, “you are ruining my outfit. My very expensive outfit.” Tony ignored her.

Bruce pulled the remains of the cake towards himself, and snagged a fork from Dummy. “The theory is sound,” he said grimly, “but in order to open the gate, we need a power source.” He began to eat the cake with single minded determination.

“ _Gross_ , guys,” Darcy said, impressed in spite of herself.

“Like, tesseract big,” Tony said, “on the order of unlimited. I mean, I’m _good_ , but I’m not _that_ good.” It seemed to pain him very much to admit it.

Darcy frowned. “What’s a tesseract?”

Bruce shot Tony a dark look around his bite. “Classified stuff,” Tony said airily, “forget I said a word.”

Jane groaned “ _So close_.”

“Join us,” Tony said, “we are wallowing.”

Darcy swallowed. What a mess. Bruce had managed to eat most of the cake already, mechanically, as if he wasn’t even noticing what he was putting in his mouth. Jane was guzzling out of her chocolate covered champagne bottle, back on the floor, and Tony had half his bit of cake in his mouth, and half all over Pepper, who seemed like she was about to lose her indulgent attitude any second.

Darcy took a breath. “Dummy,” she said grimly, “Get the fire extinguisher.” Dummy whistled happily.

Tony’s head shot up. “Wait, what?”

“You!” Darcy shouted, “You three are supposed to be the greatest minds of our generation! Instead you’re lying on the ground, slobbering all over each other, wasting your time instead of working! You’re all of you _pathetic_!”

Bruce was shocked enough to stop eating, his fork paused halfway up to his mouth. “But it’s—“

“Impossible, I know. But Tony, weren’t you just saying that you had already done the impossible? So what’s one more miracle? _You_ ,” she pointed at Tony, “five years ago, if I had told you that one day you were going to stop making weapons, make _yourself_ into a fucking weapon, and fly around the world in a crazy shiny robot suit,   wouldn’t you have told me that it was impossible?”

“Well,” Tony said wryly, “highly improbable. Except the shiny part.”

“What about your shrapnel wound? It should be impossible that you’re still alive! And _you_ ,” she turned her finger towards Bruce, “What are the odds that someone could have survived that accident? That they could still be alive, and still be sane years later, that after everything they’ve seen, everything they’ve _done,_ that they still want to get out there and help people?”

He slumped, and continued eating.

“And you,” Darcy turned to Jane, and couldn’t help her voice softening, “what happened to the Jane Foster I knew, huh? Remember when we couldn’t even get enough funding to be able to afford a fan in the office? Remember when we lived in trailers in New Mexico because you wanted to try and find something everyone else was saying wasn’t out there? Remember when you never gave up, when you stubborned a fucking _god_ into falling in love with you, when you told me that waiting for someone to come back for you wasn’t good enough, not when you had the power of _science_?” Dummy tapped her on the shoulder, a robot gesture of support.

Jane only groaned a little, and twitched.

Darcy sighed. “You were my hero, Jane Foster. What I do now, I do with love.” She grabbed the fire extinguisher and sprayed Jane full in the face.

\--

“Good job,” Pepper said later, after the two of them had hauled Jane, Bruce, and Tony into the showers and turned the water on full blast. Her outfit was undeniably ruined, with what appeared to be Tony’s chocolate faceprint on her midriff, and her hair had escaped its elegant bun. She still managed to look a thousand times more put together than Darcy on her best day.

“I can’t believe that this is my life now,” Darcy said, shaking her head ruefully, “I mean, I have a BA from Berkley, which somehow translated into babysitting physicists? Not to mention SHIELD...”

“Hey,” Pepper laughed, “I used to feel the exact same way.”  She looked down at her watch, “I’m going to take Tony with me to Washington and back to Malibu for a bit. He doesn’t do well with committee hearings, but it might be just the thing he needs, to bully some politicians for a change. Of course, I’ll probably regret that statement instantly, but you should try and get the other two to take some time off. Get some perspective. When he comes back, he’ll be ready to work.”

“Hmm...”

“And Darcy?” Pepper laid a companionable hand on her shoulder briefly, “I didn’t even finish _my_ degree.”

She strode out, in change-the-world mode, chatting to JARVIS. Darcy looked at Dummy, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry Jane, but Pepper Potts is totally my new hero.”

\--

Bruce and Jane threw a fit when they came down the next morning to find an OUT OF ORDER sign tacked onto the Super Lab, and a smug Darcy who told them the lab would be off limits for the next week until Tony got back, but it was a small kind of fit.

Jane waxed indignant on the implied necessity of Tony Stark to the progression of science, but in a meeting-the-quota, not in an actually-mad kind of way. Bruce just gave the closed door a single, forlorn look, then turned the puppy dog eyes towards Darcy. When she proved immovable, he sighed and plodded away. Darcy immediately suspected him of simply working in his room.

She spent her entire first day of imposed vacation with Jane in Manhattan. They went shopping on Tony Stark’s dime, as part of further guilt tripping that Darcy couldn’t even bring herself to feel bad about.

Jane’s closet was just a _mess_ , a motley collection of plaid unisex and men’s shirts, all of them baggy and ill-fitting. When you weeded out what wasn’t Erik’s things, or Dr. Blake’s things, or even Darcy’s things, there wasn’t much. And Jane, as more than one shop girl gushed, had the face and figure to be dressed up _right_.

Jane bore all the shopping with stoic good humor, trying on clothes, turning around, and basically being Darcy’s Barbie doll without any protest but a bit of bemused confusion as the shopping bags piled round their feet. Darcy had a feeling that most of these clothes would go unworn in favor of Erik’s thirty year old baggy sweatshirt, but she was determined to give it the good ol’ college try.

And she didn’t neglect herself, either. Pepper had been clear in handing over the card that she considered it a present for the both of them, and that if they didn’t manage to max it out, she would be _very disappointed_. And Jane, who was indifferent at best towards her own looks, dressed Darcy with an enthusiasm that she was convinced was at least half revenge.

But it felt _good_ , to go out, and get fresh air, and pretend like aliens and secret government agencies and gods and space portals didn’t exist. She and Jane grabbed lunch in a trendy cafe that cost a bomb, both dressed in new clothes, and Darcy was pleased to note that the people who passed by were giving them glances because they looked so damn good, not because Jane had lettuce in her hair again, or because Darcy had realized she had left her keys at Stark Towers three blocks from home again and was standing on the street corner, cursing up a storm.

The city was still showing signs of attack, though. Months later some of the buildings had cracks running in them, or scorch marks, and on several street corners Darcy could still see emergency workers carting away the rubble. But New Yorkers seemed to be giving a big “fuck you” to everyone in general by ignoring all of it and continuing on their lives as normal.

“Can you believe I’ve lived here for four months and never even enjoyed it?”

Jane smiled and took a bite of her sandwich. “I admit, it is nice to get out.”

“I told you! You totally needed a break. There’s no point in working yourself so hard if Thor is just gonna step through, be all “My fair lady Jane!” to a skeleton.”

Jane chuckled, then bit her lip. “Darcy...” she plowed on. “Why do you think he left?”

“Bruce said that he needed to get Loki home. To stand trial. Bruce said he asked about you often, talked about you a lot.”

Jane clenched her fist. “When I think about how they lured me away...”

“Hey,” Darcy grabbed her hand. “SHIELD did it for your own safety. I mean, I totally don’t agree with their methods, especially since you couldn’t even see me cross the stage, but Bruce said that they thought Loki would try and use you to hurt Thor. He said there was a mind control thing...that when he realized who Erik was, he went after him. And Erik is _still_ stuck getting debriefed, or whatever.”

Jane still didn’t look convinced.

“You know,” Darcy said softly, “I think he came back for you.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot? Sometimes I think I’m an idiot. I’m working so hard for someone I barely know, who maybe could have come back on his own already, if he really wanted to, and—“

“Hey. What happened ‘No one’s going to hand you anything’? You wouldn’t be the Jane I knew if you were working hard for something. And as for barely knowing him, I mean I barely met the guy myself, but any idiot could see that you two had a connection. I mean, even _Erik_ noticed.”

“I do keep having these dreams,” Jane confessed, “about Yggdrasil, and a bridge made of rainbows, and I can see stars in them Darcy. I can see a golden city, and a world that’s made of ice so cold...Sometimes, I think they’re from him. He told me a little about it when he was here, but these dreams...”

“Boy, you have got it _bad_.”

She was rewarded with seeing Jane laugh, the shadows chased out from her eyes.

\--

The second day she told JARVIS to take her to 30th floor, overladen, with Dummy in tow.

Bruce answered her knock dressed in sweatpants, and an old Harvard T-shirt. He looked like he just woke up from a twenty four hour nap, and Darcy felt a grin settle on her face. Sleepy Bruce was a look she _liked_.

“Darcy?” Bruce said, squinting at her, then belatedly fumbling for his glasses.

“Hey doc,” she grinned, “could you gimme a hand here? I’m kinda about to drop everything I got.”

He reached for her bags, and Darcy barged in, greeted with a sparse looking suite that other being two floors down and decorated primarily in earth tones matched Jane’s perfectly. Bruce seemed to live like he was in a hotel room, with the couch all the furniture looking like he had never touched it. Darcy was sure that if JARVIS had allowed for such things, a layer of dust would sit on top of everything. She resisted the urge to rifle through his closets, sure she would find a backpack already packed.

“Is something wrong?” Bruce said, “I thought the lab was closed—“

“The lab _is_ closed. That’s why I’m here. You need to learn to relax.”

“But—“

She spun around, hands on her hips. “That is why I am going to teach you to _bake_ , Bruce Banner.”

She was delighted to learn that Bruce was as meticulous in this as he was in all things, measuring ingredients with laboratory precision.  She finally had to put her foot down when he rummaged out an old weigh scale from somewhere in the depths of his room, and spent five minutes getting her two cups of flour.

“It’s called weighing by differences,” he explained to her, “If you weigh the measure with your solute, then weigh the measure once it’s been emptied, you can get a precise record of the quantity of solute you have actually put into the bowl.

“Of course,” he continued, frowning, “this scale is only accurate to two significant decimal points, so precise is really a manner of speaking here. The best method is of course, using an analytical scale, but that was not made to handle such large quantities. It would take so many measurements that the precision likely be outweighed by the loss of accuracy.”

Darcy was chuffed to notice he had started to scribble down numbers on a scrap of paper.

“I’m going to teach you a new way, doc,” Darcy grinned, “It’s way better. Watch.”

She dipped her cup into the mound of sifted flour, and leveled it with her finger. Then she dumped it into her bowl and repeated. “It’s called the eyeball method.”

Bruce tried to look at her gravely, but was betrayed by the smile hovering around his lips. “I don’t think that method is either accurate, or precise, Darcy.”

“No, but it’s totally awesome.”

Between the two of them they turned out triple chocolate cookies, a kind of cookie sandwich she had seen online where someone had surrounded an Oreo with cookie batter, that she had known would be awesome without even needing to test it, a couple loaves of garlic bread, just for a change of pace, and some truly decadent cinnamon cranberry muffins because she had solemnly declared that they also needed to eat some kind of fruit or vegetable.

True to her word, she let him lick the bowl.

“This isn’t very hygienic,” he said, frowning at the wooden spoon she was holding under his nose.

“You mean to tell me that you’ve never licked a bowl before?”

“Of course I have,” Bruce said, peevishly grabbing the spoon, “I just decided that if we both get salmonella poisoning tomorrow, I wanted to be able to say I told you so.”

They spent most of the afternoon and much of the evening sprawled on Bruce’s couch, in the throes of a sugar coma. Tony, of course, had Netflix, as well as a bajillion channels, and after a few moments of flipping, she settled on a rerun of The Big Bang Theory.

Bruce _hated_ it. “That is not how physicists behave!” he said, “most of them are perfectly normal, genius does not always equate social awkwardness.” And, “He’s using that theory completely wrong! And why is the studio audience laughing? Bernoulli’s equation is high school-level physics stuff, there is nothing high brow or funny about it!”

It wasn’t exactly Darcy’s favourite show, but they watched the whole thing just so she could witness more of Bruce’s Indignant Physicist yelling.

 “Want to watch a movie?” she said, after he had managed to placate himself with a whole handful of cookies. She never got tired of how much he could manage to pack away. It seemed like whenever she turned around for a minute, _platters_ of food could be demolished, leaving Bruce with a sheepish expression on his face. “What’s your poison? Action movie? I bet the science sucks in those things too. Horror? Though I’m gonna warn you right now, I have been known to literally barf in fright at those things before.”

She was flipping idly through channels when she got a text from Tony. _check the tv_ was all it said. JARVIS obligingly switched to CNN.

Where Tony was, not surprisingly, making an ass of himself. “Why don’t you ever write?” he was saying plaintively to some dour faced politicians, “why don’t you ever call?” the news scroll along the bottom of the screen read BILLIONAIRE TONY STARK MAKES TOTAL ASS OF SELF AT TODAY’S SENATE HEARING ON THE AVENGERS INITIATIVE.

“Oh this is classic,” Darcy breathed, texting Jane, who showed up almost immediately, having had her own curt summons from Tony.

“What about my clean energy bill?” Tony said, strutting it up in high form and mugging in front of the news cameras. Darcy had studied his Senate weapons hearing outburst in her Politics class as an example of What Not To Do, and she had to hand it to Tony; he sure was making sure that their curricula had to be current. “All you ever want to talk about is Avengers this, and Avengers that. If you want to see what the Avengers did, you can catch it all on YouTube.”

He made a few swipes at his phone, and the TV screen at the front of the room obediently began to play a YouTube clip someone had had the presence of mind to take. “Look, there’s me. Notice the suit. Handsome stuff, if I do say so myself. Now here’s me grabbing the nuclear weapon that _no one seems to care was fired at us,_ and taking it through that giant portal thing, basically saving the day. I mean, what more could you ask for, an autograph? Well, if you insist...”

“Mr. Stark!” one of the dour politicians barked, “If you would get back to your seat! This committee has requested multiple times for the identities of the other members of the so-called Avengers under the Patriot Act—“

“And you can’t have them,” Tony sighed, “not that I understand why you even want them. I mean, I’m a little hurt here, Senator. It’s clear I did all the work, all the heavy lifting, so to speak. But no, that info is completely privileged, need to know basis only. And you clearly don’t need to know. And it’s obvious why. What kind of idiot invites the press to witness him try and requisition top secret information?”

Tony started to blow kisses at the camera, no doubt assuring them that he didn’t mean those harsh things he was saying.

“That was just a snippet of what turned out to be a lengthy deliberation in Washington today,” the anchor on screen summarized, “in the end, however, Mr. Stark was able to keep the identities of the Avengers group a secret.”

“Well that was dumb,” Darcy said into the silence.

Jane snorted. “I expect nothing less of him.”

“I can see why Pepper thought this would cheer him up. I could practically _see_ the roses in his cheeks.”

“Bet he wore blush,” Bruce said slyly.

Darcy choked on her cookie. Dummy helpfully handed her some water.  “You’re the best Dummy.”

 Then, “Bruce, did you eat _all_ the food?”

Bruce froze, his cheeks bulging. “No,” he said guiltily, his voice muffled. He swallowed thickly. “You guys had some too, remember?”

“God,” Jane said, shaking her head, “Totally unfair metabolism.”

“Most of those recipes said _serves four!”_

“Sorry,” he said, ducking his head sheepishly.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter as well as the one before was originally supposed to just be one, but it got way too long. Thus, the split!

**Chapter Five**

**  
** _But what will you do_

_When you run it through and  
_

_You can't  get me  
_

_Back on the farm  
_

 

\--

The third day Darcy spent at SHIELD headquarters, filling out overdue paperwork. SHIELD required all of its employees to be duty cleared every three months, even the lowly research assistants, and duty clear meant a full physical and weapons testing.

“Count yourself lucky,” her recruiter had said in the beginning, “field agents have to do it every month.”

The physical was annoying, but Darcy considered it worth it for the kick ass health plan that SHIELD provided. And the weapons training...

“Seriously?” Jane had said, backing away from Darcy in horror, “They let you have a gun?”

“Not just have,” Darcy had said, sighing happily, (“Seriously. _You_. Have. _A gun_.”) “They trained me to use it too.”

She had dragged Jane with her by telling her all the cool things that SHIELD had to offer, and by saying it would be an adventure. Basically she had lied through her teeth, in no small part because Jane who, as an independent consultant liaising with SHIELD, didn’t have to do any tests, and Darcy had wanted her to _pay_.

Predictably, Jane had been treated like royalty walking through SHIELD headquarters. The scientists and lab techs not lucky enough to get a (semi) private lab at Stark Tower flocked around her, sharing geeky stories about how her work changed their life, or her dissertation, or her paper, blah blah blah, basically being nerdy groupies. The field agents and security staff, while not going as far to ask if Jane might be willing to take a look at his work (he’d be so honored), nevertheless gave her appreciative glances, which was a big deal. Security didn’t even so much as look down Darcy’s shirt whenever she stopped by. “See this scar?” she said experimentally to a group of them milling about Jane, and waved her knuckles in their faces. “Yeah. Totally got that on the job. You know. Punching Tony Stark. In the face. All in a day’s work.” They were not even a little impressed. Must have been the combo of beauty and brains.

Jane treated all the attention heaped on her with shy smiles and hesitant conversation, which no doubt endeared her to the masses even more. If Darcy hadn’t literally _dragged_ Jane away by one arm, it would have taken them hours to cross the lobby. “Move along!” she finally yelled, “she’s not here to sign anything, or to advise on your methodology,  or to listen to your crazy, rambly stories! Break it up!”

“ _Darcy_ ,” Jane had said, utterly shocked. She had scolded Darcy on her rudeness all through her physical, but had promptly shut up as soon as Darcy pulled out her gun. Smart girl.

Her proficiency was never as good as a field agent’s but her weapons handler had said she had had a good eye. And good instincts, whatever that meant.

Darcy found it a bit of a stress reliever to head to SHIELD’s weapons ranges after the worst days at the lab. They were open 24/7, and people left you alone there. In the beginning she had shot so poorly it was embarrassing, but now she was pleased to note that she mainly hit the part of the target she aimed at, and more importantly, her shots formed a tight cluster.

“Give it a try,” she said, handing her gun to Jane, who gripped it like it was a live snake, ready to kill her.

It was nice to be better at something than Jane, petty as it sounded, and they were good enough friends that when Jane yelped at the recoil, Darcy didn’t even feel bad about laughing.

“Okay,” Jane said grimly, once they were done at the ranges, Darcy with a shiny stamp on her paperwork, “What’s next?”

“Self-defense training,” Darcy said grimly, “Prepare to get hurt.”

As far as Darcy was concerned self defense training amounted to an overly muscular man pinning her in various painful ways enthusiastically. She personally counted it as a success if she could make it through a session without being thrown across the room.

“Are we having fun yet girls?” the man hollered, sitting on Darcy’s back. Jane was pinned under a similarly muscled man. Jane had given up trying to ‘self-defend’ and seemed to be employing the tried and true method of ‘playing dead’.

“Maybe if we were naked,” she muttered, and heard Jane’s muffled snort to her right.

The trainer seemed to take offense at that, and promptly threw Darcy across the room.

Darcy hobbled out of there, more dead than alive, but with the last shiny stamp to complement her paper. “You barely passed,” the man said to her gravely. “You should come back for more instruction.”

“Maybe in three months,” Darcy said cheekily. Jane, who was pretty much past the point of speech, had been informed that if this had been real SHIELD recertification, she wouldn’t have passed at all.

“Take me home,” Jane moaned, “Please, take me home.”

Darcy dragged Jane back to Stark Tower, and because she couldn’t bear to subway home again, waved Jane off (“ _Come to SHIELD, you said. It’ll be fun, you said,”_ Jane had been mimicking meanly on her way in), stopped at a Chinese take-out place, and showed up at Bruce’s door again.

“Batman marathon?” she offered, holding up the food.

Bruce deflated. “Sure,” he said resignedly, “why not.”

After they had finished _Batman Begins_ , Darcy let out the breath she had been holding for the past two hours. “Are we ever gonna talk about the other day?”

“What’s to say?” Bruce said carefully, to his credit not trying to pretend he didn’t know what she was on about.

“If you have an argument with someone, you don’t always get to decide when it ends! How will anything ever get resolved if I always have to just walk away and pretend like it never happened? Are you still taking the pills?”

“...Yes.

“Darcy,” Bruce said seriously, “This isn’t a joke. When I tell you to walk away from a room, it’s for your own good. I need to know that you’ll listen to me.”

_When your body tells you to run, you_ run _._

“Yeah, but—“

“No buts. He...the other guy is not the same as me. When he comes out, I don’t control his actions. I don’t have any say. If you stick around, just to make a point, you could get hurt.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like he’s just a killing machine. I mean with the attack on New York, he helped! He was an Avenger!”

“Maybe, but it’s not always that simple. The other guy doesn’t function on the same rules and values that we do. He’s anger, first and foremost. And I can’t trust that he’ll make a decision that would differentiate between friend and foe.”

“Maybe that’s your problem,” Darcy said petulantly. “Maybe you don’t trust him.”

Bruce looked at her for a long, sad moment. “That’s the least of my problems, Darcy,” he said.

\--

Darcy woke up at one am on the fourth day with the sound of her phone jangling in her ear. “Whuh?” she said intelligently into it.

“Get up here!” Jane said excitedly, “Oh my god I almost forgot it was tonight! Come up here right now!”

Darcy fumbled for her glasses in the dark. She had drifted off from sheer exhaustion sometime after the Joker had set fire to a large pile of money, and realized now that Bruce had taken off her glasses and covered her with a blanket. “Where are you?” she said, trying to rifle her thoughts in order.

“Tower roof. Get over here _right now_! It’s happening!” Jane hung up with an excited click.

Darcy fumbled a light on. Bruce had cleaned up after their meal and left her glasses and a glass of water on the table, along with a folded up sweatshirt, in case she got cold in the night. Darcy hugged herself tightly. He was infuriating, but he was so _sweet_ , so nice. He was probably the most genuinely kind person she knew, and everybody, including Bruce himself, treated him like a monster. It just wasn’t _right_.

A ringing sound in the room behind her distracted her from the warmth she felt in her chest. It stopped, and Darcy smiled to herself. No doubt Jane had called him as well.

She got up and went to knock at Bruce’s door, trying not to feel a little hurt that Jane had his cell phone number and she didn’t.

Bruce opened it, dressed in sweatpants again, phone in one hand. “Do you know what’s going on?”

Darcy smiled. “Jane wants to show us something on the roof. I interned for her for four months in New Mexico. Trust me, this used to happen _all the time_.”

Bruce’s mouth quirked. “Poor you. I’m coming.”

“But uh,” Darcy felt herself blushing, no matter how much she was telling herself to play it cool. “You may want to put on a shirt, Doc.”

Bruce flushed and disappeared back into his bedroom. Darcy felt like kicking herself. How was it fair that a man who ate so much managed to look so good? _How_?

She snagged the sweatshirt and the blanket, then handed Bruce a couple of cushions. “Knowing Jane, we could be up there awhile.”

On the rooftop, Jane was bent over one of her homemade telescopes, peering at the night sky. “Just in time! I called Stark too but Pepper said he was busy, so I guess it’s just the three of us,” she exclaimed, too caught up in her own excitement to comment on the fact that Darcy and Bruce had shown up at the exact same time, Darcy in Bruce’s clothing. Or to remember the fact that Tony was still in D.C. “It’s just beginning to be visible to the naked eye!”

_It_ turned out to be a meteor shower, one that was just starting to kick into full swing. Darcy settled back against the wall of the roof, looking at the meteors streak across the night sky.

“I almost forgot it was tonight!” Jane said, “I mean, I usually have this stuff programmed into my calendar, but when I found out I was coming to New York, I didn’t even bother. Like, c’mon right? But I forgot that you can still see the stars from the top of Stark Tower.” She bent over her telescope again.

Darcy offered a cushion and part of her blanket to Bruce, who accepted with a grateful sigh. It was chilly on the roof at night, and the headwinds at a billion stories up? Still no joke.

“All the time, you say?”

Darcy snorted. “Oh yeah. Hey Jane, remember the Persian one that summer?”

“Perseid,” Jane corrected absently.

“Right. You spent three weeks scouting out the best spot to see it, only to have it be cloudy that night, remember? So you and Erik loaded me up into the trailer, and we spent three hours driving around on the back roads, trying to find a clear spot in the clouds.”

“Oh yeah,” Jane said fondly, “good times.”

“Good times? You guys went into the desert! The trailer was never meant to be an offroad vehicle! I thought we were gonna flip, and my butt got all these bruises, and _finally_ , you guys get to this random ass spot in the middle of nowhere, remember? My phone didn’t even have a signal. And then after—“

“The trailer wouldn’t start,” Jane finished. “I remember”

Bruce choked out a laugh.

“Man, it’s not even funny. I thought I was going to die out there. Even Erik was panicking, saying stuff like _just keep calm_ , which was freaking us out more.”

“We weren’t going to die out there.”

“Easy for you to say! You didn’t even think there was a problem until the fucking coyotes came!”

Jane frowned. “They knocked over my camera tripod.”

“Yeah, because I had to _literally yank you inside_.”

“So how’d you guys make it out?”

Darcy groaned. “That was the worst part. So we hunker down for the night, me and Erik like two minutes away from starting to write our memoirs in blood on the walls or something, and Jane here all spaced out, only trying to get home so she could start analyzing her data—worst night of my life by the way. Then the next morning, we get up really early, Erik gives each of us a compass, and tells us to pick a direction and walk for a mile to see if we can spot a road or something. I mean, it was totally hopeless. Of course, we’ve all only been walking for like a minute before Jane hollers, and it turns out, the whole night we were literally twenty yards away from a diner. The road was behind this big rock.”

Bruce laughed for real then.

“Told you it would have been fine,” Jane said, “and they had really good eggs there. Plus, it finally convinced Erik to get the humvee so, totally worth it.”

They passed the next two hours telling Bruce funny stories from New Mexico, about chasing down errant magnetic storms, (“That’s when we met Thor, when he fell out of the sky and Jane decided to show him that we Earthlings come in peace.”

“...I hit him with my car.”

“Yeah,” Darcy chuckled fondly, “you sure did, you crazy kids.”) and star mapping, and the crazy shit that people got up to in New Mexico .

“They totally ate lizards there, I swear.”

“No, Darcy, I keep telling you, that guy was just pulling your leg.”

“Yeah, if by ‘pulling’ you mean, ‘spitting sweet truth’ and by ‘my leg’ you mean ‘directly into my heart and soul’. I tell you _they were eating lizards_.”

“I’ve eaten lizard before,” Bruce said diffidently, and the conversation rapidly swung from New Mexico to all over the world.

Bruce hesitantly told them about his time spent in India, in Brazil, even in the Amazon rainforest. “I’d just pass through, see if anyone could use a doctor.

“So I’ve eaten lizard before. It was a little stringy. I’ve eaten tons of weird stuff, just because you can’t be picky in those kinds of places. Once in Southern China they offered me dog.”

“ _Did you eat it?_ ” Darcy was the edge of her seat.

“No...I couldn’t bring myself to do it. But I couldn’t be rude so I waited until my hosts turned around, then dumped it in my bag. It ruined my bag though, since I tried to carry it until I saw someone who might want to eat it. It ruined some bandages I had in there too.” He shrugged slightly, like _what can you do_.

Darcy was certain that Bruce Banner was the coolest person she had ever met. Like, ever. He was telling them another story, about this flash flood in Thailand while he was trying to herd goats, and she was watching his profile, utterly rapt.

At the peak of the shower the meteors washed the roof with a faint silvery light, and his outline was etched with it. His face was all over whorls of shadows, but she could still see that he was utterly animated. She could see each individual eyelash against the night sky and when he blinked she shivered, as if she could have felt it against her skin.

He absentmindedly drew the blanket up Darcy, not breaking from his story telling, and while they weren’t quite close enough to touch, she could feel the heat that he radiated.  

_Oh god,_ Darcy realized suddenly, _I’m in trouble, aren’t I?_

Behind Bruce sat Jane, who had given up on the telescope and had settled down to chat and with a start Darcy realized that Jane was looking at her with a guarded, thoughtful expression on her face.

She narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, but to Darcy’s relief, instead of asking an uncomfortable question, only said, “You seem to prefer tropical locales, doctor?” Trust Jane, ever the scientist.

“Yeah,” Bruce ducked his head, and Darcy didn’t need to be able to see his face to know that he was blushing. She wondered giddily what it would feel like against her skin. _Yup_ , _really in trouble here_. “I found that it’s easier to wake up in a warm place, after the other guy makes an appearance. Especially since my clothes don’t usually make it.”

Now it was Darcy’s turn to blush. “Tell me about India!” she babbled, trying to get the picture of a naked Bruce out of her head, especially since he was within touching distance.

He obliged, and told them that he backpacked to remote yoga retreats, and how he went without speaking for three months because a yogi told him it would help him find inner peace.

“Did it work?”  Jane asked.

“Not...really. The other guy doesn’t go much in for letting me find inner peace.”

_Great_. Now Darcy’s mind was full of images of Bruce in crazy yoga stretches.

Bruce and Darcy helped Jane carry down her telescope when Jane finally declared herself satisfied, about the time that dawn was peeking through around the east. Bruce made interested noises about the design, and he and Jane spent the elevator ride down comparing ingenious ways of using tape and rubber bands to fashion together doctor’s clinics and labs.

“Night, Bruce,” Darcy said, mostly asleep on Jane’s couch.

“Night, Darcy,” he said softly, and she thought she felt a soft touch on her head. But she was already asleep, and could never be certain.

\--

Days Four and Five were spent on Jane’s couch, Darcy wallowing. Darcy wallowing meant that by turns she rolled around on the couch and/or floor, moaned to herself, completely ignored personal hygiene, inhaled cookies listlessly, and watched TV like a zombie.

Jane, to her credit, put up with all of it good-naturedly. Darcy wanted to be left alone, and for complete attention to be paid to her, all at the same time. Jane stroked her hair, didn’t seem to mind Darcy’s increasingly rank breath, got out of her way when she rolled, brought her more cookies, and watched TV with her. Darcy loved her so much.

The best part of it was, Jane didn’t say a word. Darcy didn’t know what she would say if she was asked about it. She didn’t want to talk about it. No. She did. She wanted to doodle their names in notebooks. She wanted to run away. She wanted to hit him in the face for making her feel like this. No, she wanted to kiss him on the mouth. No, all over his body. Actually, on second thought, all over his body would be good. (This part of her wallowing, thankfully, Darcy managed to keep to herself).

In short, she was basically a mess.

“You’re my best friend, Jane Foster,” she had groaned at one point, slobbering crumbs all over her.

“Good.” Jane said decisively, “I had better be after this.”

On the fifth day she finally worked up the courage to say something. “What do I do?” she whispered to Jane, in the middle of a _Futurama_ rerun.

Jane paused the TV, and turned to her. That was another awesome thing about her. She never acted like her problems were trivial, even when they (mostly) were. “Well,” she said thoughtfully, after a long, long, moment, “it might not be a good idea to this one with a car. Just sayin’.”

At around 10 pm on the fifth day, because Darcy Lewis did not run from her problems, she threw herself into the shower, put on some of the clothes she had stashed around Jane’s place, and headed downstairs.

“Hi,” she said to Bruce when he opened the door.

“Hi,” he said back. She got the sense that he was pleased to see her, and wishful thinking or not, she felt absurdly happy.

They both said nothing. Darcy realized, panicked, that she actually hadn’t thought things through enough to know what to do now, and that at any moment Bruce was going to ask her what she was doing here.

“Want to come in?” he said with a small smile, and Darcy felt her own face crack into a wide grin.

\--

Tony called her at one am. She was on the elevator ride down, after watching three hours of _Veronica Mars_ on Bruce’s couch, him half watching, half reading a scientific journal. She didn’t trust herself to fall asleep on his couch again, and was just thinking to herself that she wished she were a supersleuth when the elevator came to a halt and one wall flickered into Tony Stark’s face.

“Lewis,” he drawled, “isn’t it past your bedtime? JARVIS has just been telling me that you have come out of a certain good doctor’s room. Are we corrupting him with our youthful ways?”

Darcy screamed.

Tony’s face winced, then returned to its default smug look. “Missed me?”

“Not even! What are you doing on the elevator?”

“You live in Stark Tower, Darcy. C’mon. Anything and everything in here is built and designed by yours truly, and can do pretty crazy things. An elevator that is also a videophone is nothing. You should see what the toilet turns into. One hint: lasers.”

“Why can’t you call me on my cell like a normal person?”

“Ok, no more hints. Spoiler alert, it turns into a mecha. Like in Transformers. It spits toilet water and shoots lasers, and is totally, totally awesome.

“But seriously now. Call you on your _phone_? That dinosaur doesn’t even have picture in picture. I have not held a phone up to my ear in the last fifteen years, and I’m not about to start for you. So c’mon. Tell me how much you missed me.”

 “I saw you on TV,” Darcy said, “Like, on the news. You were yelling at the Senate about The Avengers.”

“Oh yeah,” Tony said, “they think if they can’t get Fury to spill _I’d_ be the weakest link? I told them they could pry our secret identities out of my cold, dead—“

“Fingers. I remember. I was there.” Pepper finished, leaning into frame and rolling her eyes. “Hello, Darcy. Did you also have a productive week?”

“Please. They were such assholes.”

“No need to tell me. I count any kind of situation where you are put in front of cameras and don’t make a profoundly stupid declaration to be one in the win column.”

“Aw,” Tony said, charmed, “That’s so sweet, Potts.”

“There have only been five of those in the time that I’ve known you, Tony.”

“Only five? That can’t be right. There has to be more. What about that time in Oslo?”

“Where you called the minister’s wife fat?”

“That wasn’t stupid, everyone was thinking it. Fine. When we unveiled that new missile in Virginia—”

“You told them that if they unleashed it, every nation in the world would be lining up, begging to suck America’s—“

“Guys,” Darcy interrupted, getting the beginnings of a headache. She could see that unless she stopped in, they would likely argue for hours. “Not that this isn’t great and all, but what gives with the late night call?”

Tony turned from Pepper to beam at her. “Good news, Darcy, baby,” he said, “I’m coming home early.”

“Oh no,” Darcy said, “But I haven’t even had time to steal all the good silver.”

“Open up the lab again,” Tony said, ignoring her utterly, “I’ll be home in the morning.”

As he clicked off Darcy could see him turn to Pepper again, no doubt about to start arguing over his press record.

After a brief pause, the elevator started into life again.

“My apologies, Ms. Darcy,” JARVIS said, “Mr. Stark overrode my protocol before I was able to give you ample warning.”

“No probs,” Darcy said thoughtfully. Then, “Could you let Bruce and Jane know? When they wake up. They might as well get one more good night’s sleep.”

“Of course.”

She stumbled through the lobby, still thinking. Tony had sounded like he was in a good mood. Like maybe he had an idea. It might have been a long shot, but she felt something as she headed home.

Something like hope.


	6. Chapter 6

_So don’t work your stuff._

_Because I’ve got troubles enough._

_No, don’t pick on me_

_When one act of kindness could be deathly (definitely)_

 

\--

Dummy met her in the lobby at seven am. It was holding a mug of coffee proudly, which was admittedly a new trick. Darcy sipped from it gratefully, then attempted to give the robot a hug. “It’s still warm!” she said, delighted. Well, as delighted as she could get at seven am in the morning. Tony back meant back to a regular work schedule, something she had been ecstatic to throw away the previous few days.

“That part was me,” a voice said from behind Dummy, amused.

It was Jane. Darcy, who had never seen Jane anywhere but the lab at seven am, looked at Dummy, who was trying its best to one arm-robot hug her back, then at Jane. Who was still in the lobby. Smiling at her. Huh.

“You woke up this early to make me coffee? You do know Tony’s back today right?”

Jane’s smile was decidedly awkward. “I know. I just wanted to say...I mean, this morning it occurred to me...”

“Did you break the kitchen again? Drink my beer? Sleep with my boyfriend—wait I don’t have a boyfriend. Jane. _What did you do_?”

“I just wanted to say...thank you.”

Darcy gaped.

“I mean...I know I’m not the easiest person to deal with. And when I get into my work I get...narrow minded. And, well, you really didn’t have to do this. Put up with me I mean.”

It appeared somehow in the last twelve hours aliens had landed on Earth and replaced Jane Foster’s brain with one that didn’t remember the absolute _mess_ she had made, rolling around on the floor, ostensibly moping over a boy. Stranger things have happened. Well Darcy certainly didn’t want to bring it up. So Jane wanted to be the bigger man? Fine. Two could play at that game.

“Well I’m not exactly Miss Congeniality either. Remember all those time outs you made me take in New Mexico?”

“No, Darcy. You moved across the country, got a job not even in a field you’re interested in, or let’s face it, even understand...for me. And I realized I never said thank you. So.”

Jane shuffled awkwardly. Darcy squinted at her. Her first instinct was that JARVIS had put something in the drinking water, but Jane did look...different. She was in a baggy plaid shirt as always, but her hair was clean, and her eyes were clear, and for once when she was talking to Darcy it didn’t seem like she was thinking about work at the same time. She was right; the vacation _had_ been good for her. Jane looked like she did before she had run Thor over. Maybe taking care of her the day before had woken her up to the slippery slope of what her life could have been.

“Jane. Did you seriously put off getting back to work to wake up in the morning, make me coffee, and tell me that I’m a good friend?”

She looked relieved. “Yes. That’s the phrase. A good friend.”

Darcy felt her eyes well up with tears. She put her arms around Jane and squeezed. “You silly girl,” she said gruffly, “You’re my best friend. Of course I’m going to take care of you.” Jane felt bony in her arms, fragile like she could snap apart at any minute. But her grip was still as strong as ever.

“I mean let’s face it,” Darcy said, stepping back from the hug and rubbing her eyes briskly. Jane was also doing the manly-pretend-you’re-not-crying-by-clearing-your-throat-awkwardly thing. “You’d be totally lost without me. Now let’s get to the lab before Tony Stark gets a hold of this footage and uses it to make a “Girls Gone Wild in Stark Tower” video.”

“Right.” Jane said, with a deep breath. “Back to work. I was thinking, if we can build a large arc reactor, that might be enough to—“

“Jane,” Darcy interrupted, following her into the elevator, “This coffee is terrible.”

“What do you expect? I’m used to making coffee with Erik’s old coffeemaker. The new-fangled brands in my kitchen were just scary. My lab, please, JARVIS.”

“ _New-fangled?_ What are you, seventy years old and my gramp-gramp? No scratch that. _Are you my gramp-gramp?”_

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dr.  Foster,” JARVIS said smoothly, “There is a lock on that floor of the Tower currently.”

Darcy stopped giggling at Jane’s use of the word _newfangled_. “It’s okay, JARVIS. You can take that lock or whatever off now. Vacation’s over.”

“Be that as it may, Ms. Darcy, I still cannot permit—“

“Oh for the love of—JARVIS: override code Juliet Foxtrot Omega, voice recognition Jane Foster.”

JARVIS immediately fell silent and the elevator doors pinged shut.

“ _What_? How come I don’t get an override code?”

Jane smiled tightly at her. “Because you would only use it for evil.”

 “Override code acknowledged. Foster, Jane. How may I help you?”

“Floor seventy-eight please.”

“No fair,” Darcy muttered, “I can’t believe I brought you guys donuts.” Dummy patted her head in consolation.

As soon as the elevator opened, Darcy could see something was wrong.

The hallway was flooded with SHIELD agents in full combat gear, wielding not just the service pistols that most employees had on them but full assault rifles. The hallway was full of smoke again, and something dark was splattered on the walls. Down in the gloom Darcy could hear what sounded like _gunfire_ , and people screaming. A crash shook the whole floor. Her mug fell from slack fingers and sprayed coffee all over her shoes.

“What—“ Jane was out in the hallway. “What’s going on?”

“My defences are failing,” JARVIS was saying in answer to a question that they had missed, “and structural damage is compromising the integrity of the walls—“

“Get out of here!” the nearest Agent said, barely sparing them a glance. “Follow emergency protocol Alpha One!”

“What the—“  She couldn’t remember what Alpha One could be. “Is this part of the elevator joke, JARVIS?”

Jane grabbed Darcy’s arm. “Alpha One,” she shouted. “It’s Bruce! Darcy—!”

A roar came from inside the smoke and scattered bullet fire. Darcy froze. It sounded like an animal. The agents started to pace down the hall, muttering tactical phrases that Darcy had never taken the time to memorize.

_Don’t be a fucking idiot_ , Director Fury’s voice sounded in her head.

Darcy grabbed a handful of Jane’s shirt and shoved her bodily back into the elevator. “Get her out of here, JARVIS!” she shouted.

 Jane refused to let go of her arm. “What are you doing Darcy?”

Another roar shook the hall, and Darcy’s head whipped around instinctively. It sounded closer this time. That feeling was back again. Like she was the prey. _Run. Hide_ , her blood sang.

“Dummy!” she shouted, “Help me!” It snatched at Jane’s arm, wrenched it from Darcy, and pulled her into the elevator. “Don’t let her use the override code again. JARVIS, what are you waiting for?”

The elevator door closed on Jane’s frightened, angry face, comprehension blooming like an ugly mask.

Darcy stood alone in the hall, her pulse pounding in her ears. _When your body tells you to run, you_ run.

So she ran down the hall. Towards the danger.

Further on she could see what the stains on the walls were. It was blood, dark and thick, congealing and dripping down the walls, off the ceiling. Agents laid on the ground in crumpled up heaps, groaning, or not moving at all. Darcy barely spared them a glance. She couldn’t stop to process what she was seeing or else she would stop moving. And whatever her body was telling her, whatever direction it was trying to get her to go in, the only thing she was sure of was that she needed to keep moving.

She caught up with the back line of agents outside the door of the Super Lab. There were cracks in the walls. The walls hadn’t even cracked when Tony had fired repulsors at them.

She stood on her tip toes behind them, trying to peer into the doorway. Someone must have let off a smoke bomb, since she couldn’t see anything through the white haze—

“Incoming!” someone said sharply, and something was thrown out of the lab. It sailed over the heads of everyone slowly to smack thickly into the wall behind Darcy. She had ducked with the others, someone’s arm had instinctively pushed her down, then when nothing else happened turned her head gingerly to look at it.

She couldn’t wrap her mind over what it was at first. It was a white and red cylinder that bounced off the wall weakly to land on the floor with a wet squelch. She stared at the end of it. It was familiar, like something she had seen before...there was a knob on that end that wasn’t a complete sphere, in fact it looked kind of...bony. Oh god.

She was looking at someone’s arm, encased in the white sleeve of a lab coat. The end of the arm was saturated with blood, like someone or something had... _ripped—_

She turned around and threw up abruptly. There was silence in the halls. Even the gunfire had stopped. In normal circumstances Darcy would have felt embarrassed to have half a squad of SHIELD operatives watch her puke dispassionately, but she was too entranced by the way her vomit was mixing with the blood that had dripped off the walls and onto the floor...

“What is she—“ one of the agents said her belatedly, “Get her out of here!”

Someone wrapped an arm around her middle and started to lift her off the ground. She was just starting to struggle, to try to get herself free when another crash shook the floor. This one was as strong as an earthquake. The agents toppled like bowling pins and plaster and cement dust rained from the ceiling She took advantage of her their distraction to wriggle free and run through the momentary gap in the bodies.

_Bruce_ , her blood was singing now _, I need to find Bruce_. Somehow, when she did, this would all make sense. He would run his fingers through his messy hair and tell her there was a small lab explosion, nothing to worry about. The stains on the wall wasn’t blood, it was...chemicals. Or motor oil. Or something. And the arm was...just a joke.

There were more agents on the ground in the lab. Or...what was left of the lab. The tables and chairs were overturned, with Jane’s bench broken in half and in pieces strewn on the floor. Papers were spilling out of it and onto the ground, and Tony’s screens were smashed into pieces on the floor. She couldn’t see the bridge anymore, which wasn’t a good sign, and she was pretty sure she could hear crinkling under her footsteps that was probably the pieces of Tony’s army... Oh god, some of the people were in pieces too.

But what really drew her eyes wasn’t the mess of the lab that she could see but the large, shadowy shape that was hunched over, indistinct behind the smoke.

“Where’s Hawkeye?” someone shouted from behind her, “We can’t keep this thing contained for much longer.”

“Iron Man, ETA five minutes,” another voice said, somewhere to her right.

Darcy didn’t hear a word of it. She stepped hazily through the smoke, her heart beating a tattoo into her ears, through her veins.

The Hulk stood beyond the smoke. The first thing she noticed was how tall he was. His head was wedged to the side at an uncomfortable angle, the twelve foot ceiling too low to contain him. There were cracks in it, probably from his repeated attempts to straighten up. The bodies strewn at his feet looked like dolls in comparison.

Shreds of what must have been Bruce’s shirt was still clinging to his frame and what she could see of his hair was the familiar greying mop. Even the ceiling dust lay in it in a familiar way.

His back was to her, and it was looking at the team of agents that had no doubt come in from the other elevator. He seemed to be considering what to do next. His hands were covered with blood.

Darcy made an involuntary noise, something halfway between a squeak and a scream that she tried to stuff back into her mouth the second it came out.

Too late. The Hulk immediately spun around—incredibly quickly for something so big and awkward looking, and stared down at her. It still looked like Bruce. That was somehow the most awful part. It looked like a green, stretched out version of Bruce, like someone had taken the bones in his face and stretched them out and padded them and twisted his features into a mask of rage. It looked like Bruce standing there in a pile of bodies and rubble, people twisted in ways that people were never meant to twist in. It was Bruce’s hands that were covered in blood, dripping in blood, literally _dripping._ A snarl rended its broad features into something inhuman—something even more inhuman, and its green eyes blazed with anger, but somehow...it still looked like Bruce.

She tried to make small, slow movements. Tried to back up, then thought better of it from the intent, considering way the Hulk was looking at her. She was sure it could hear her breathing, quick and harsh in the sudden quiet, hear her heartbeat, thudding erratically in her ears so violently she was certain she was quivering with it, hear her brain tick. She was certain in a few seconds it would tear her apart too, try and figure out how those sounds were coming out of her body.

She was scared, she noted almost dimly, adrenaline forcing herself almost out of her body. Scratch that. She was fucking _terrified_.

“Bruce...” she said slowly, reaching a hand up, palm out in the universal signal for _stop_. She licked her lips dryly and tasted plaster, and gunpowder, and blood from a cut she hadn’t even noticed getting. The Hulk narrowed its eyes at her, considering. A rumble was starting somewhere deep in its chest. “ _Please_.”

The last thing she saw was a huge green arm coming towards her before she was flying through the air, swatted aside as easily as a breath. She landed against a bench, _hard_ , pain exploded in her like a sunburst and—

\--

Darcy came to groggily. A machine was beeping somewhere to her right, and she felt pain everywhere, but in the dim hazy way that came from being pretty heavily medicated. She immediately tried to sit up and hissed with the sudden flare up from her midsection.

Jane was by her side. She helped Darcy sit up with gentle hands, then stepped away. She was haggard and pale, her hair limp, and when she reached for the table beside her to pour Darcy a glass of water she could see that Jane’s hands were shaking.

“What happened?” Darcy croaked. “Where am I?”

“Stark Tower,” Jane said, her voice curiously subdued. She gave up pouring the water after her hands couldn’t get a stead enough grip on the jug and Dummy took over smoothly.

“Thanks,” Darcy said, sipping. “What happened? Is Bruce—“

Jane had been standing, hunched over. Now she straightened, and snapped round to glare at Darcy. She was startled to realize that what she had assumed had been the shaking of exhaustion or fear had turned out to be rage. “You fucking _idiot_ ,” Jane snarled, “What were you _thinking?_ You could have died! You almost did die! Do you know how lucky you are to make it out with just a couple of broken ribs? If you didn’t have such a thick, fucking stupid head you could have smashed it to pieces. What is _wrong_ with you?”

Darcy lay back, startled. She had never seen Jane so angry before. “Hey, Boss.” She said soothingly, “I’m fine. See? And don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same. If I hadn’t thrown you in the elevator you would have—“

“There is a _difference_ between scientific curiosity and _running headfirst into danger_ ,” Jane snarled, “What you did was the stupidest thing—do you know how scared I was? You could have _died_ Darcy, and you’re treating this like some kind of _joke_ —“

“Dr. Foster,” JARVIS cut in smoothly, “I have been left with strict instructions that Ms. Darcy not be agitated in any way—“

“ _Agitated?_ I’ll give you agitated—“

“Jane. Please.” Darcy reached a shaky hand out to her— _ow_ —not quite reaching the distance between her bed and Jane who was now huddling in the chair. Jane reached out at the last instant and grabbed Darcy’s hand with fingers that trembled. “She’s gonna be quiet, JARVIS. I swear.” She really didn’t want to be alone right now.

Jane took a deep breath and tried to calm herself.

“Stark Tower, huh?” Darcy tried to change the subject. “You would think that Tony’dve sprung for nicer medical digs. I’d have thought that guy got blown up all the time.”

“This is a storage room,” Jane intoned, “we had to clear it out in a hurry. The medical floor was right above and...it didn’t make it.”

Darcy closed her eyes and saw the ceiling of the Lab crack and splinter in the darkness behind her eyes. She opened them again hastily and peered at the room. Now that Jane mentioned it, it did look super shoddy as well as super small. Stark Tower’s storage floors were nothing more than rooms separated by flimsy cubicle walls that could be moved around by the whim of whoever was putting stuff away and JARVIS and this room looked like no exception. The only things in it were the hospital bed that looked like it had been hurriedly wheeled in, the beeping heart machine thing beside her and the flimsy looking fold-up chair that Jane was currently collapsed in. In fact...Darcy craned her head the other way, ignoring the dull pain in her neck. another cubicle wall greeted her.

“Man, this is a fucking _closet_.”

“We needed to make the rooms as small as possible,” Jane said tonelessly. “To optimize our space.”

_How many people are here?_ Darcy thought dizzyingly. “Oh. Is...is Bruce okay?”

“I don’t know,” Jane said tightly. “He’s not awake yet.”

A shudder worked its way through her body and she dropped Darcy’s hand. “ _You fucking idiot!”_ she yelled, clearly no longer able to stay calm, “Three floors of the Towers are gone—“

“Dr. Foster,” JARVIS said disapprovingly, “I must insist that you leave now. The other patients on this floor need their rest, as well as Ms. Darcy.”

“No. Wait.” Darcy reached for Jane again, who had already backed off with jerky movements. “She’ll be good, right Jane? She’s not bothering me at all, JARVIS. Really.”

“If and when Dr. Foster is able to control herself she will be allowed back into the room. Until then, I must insist you try and get some rest.”

“You know what?” Jane said, “I really don’t think I can be good right now. In fact, I think I’m about to kick your ass, Darcy Lewis.”

“Dr. Foster, if you do not vacate the premises immediately I shall have no other option but to notify security.”

Jane headed out the door with slow, jerky movements, then turned at the door and jabbed two fingers towards Darcy’s eyes. “You and me are not through,” she promised in a voice that made Darcy shiver, then was...gone.

Well. Fuck.

“In the future when you are well,” JARVIS said conversationally, “I shall take a moment to read both you and Dr. Foster a lecture regarding the safety issues inherent in ignoring my security observations.”

“I’m sorry JARVIS.”

“Save that sentiment for the future, please.”

Darcy laid back down on her bed and tried not to let her mind wander. There was nothing for her to look at but the white of the ceiling and the fluorescent lights above her left a glare that looked nothing like the splattered walls of the lab but she could still see it, the dark stains that she had only realized with a dawning horror was blood—

Something tapped on her head and she moved it stiffly to see Dummy who was twisting its hand with an air of decided concern.

“Thank you,” she said, patting Dummy gently. “Thanks for helping me with Jane earlier too.” She took a breath. “JARVIS, can you give me a rundown of what happened?”

“I really must recommend you spend this time resting,” JARVIS said after a long moment, sounding a touch disapproving, “While I do not agree with Dr. Foster’s methods, I must agree with her sentiment. You acted rashly before and should spend your time recuperating your strength.”

“I can’t sleep,” Darcy groaned. “Just tell me what happened, JARVIS.”

The wall in front of her blinked and the top half changed easily to a slightly grainy picture of the Lab from a top corner vantage point, a time stamp at the bottom right of the screen declaring that the footage was from six forty-five this morning.

Darcy was past surprised at this. After Tony’s elevator speech about the laser toilet she wasn’t shocked in the least that the moveable cheap walls of the _storage rooms_ of Stark Tower also contained super high tech video screens.

Bruce was slumped over at his bench in the footage being played. The angle wasn’t the best from the camera—Darcy couldn’t see his face, but it was clear that he was still himself.

“The cause of the incident is as of this point unknown,” JARVIS intoned. “There does not appear to be an outside aggressive stimulus that caused Dr. Banner to lose composure.”

_Lose composure_. Well that was one way of putting it.Darcy leaned in despite herself, as if that would make the picture more clear. Bruce appeared to be clenching his hands into fists and as she watched, he shuddered, then dug wildly in his bench for something—she couldn’t see what, before hunching over further. One of his hands had remained on his bench throughout this. It unclenched slowly and his splayed fingers thickened—lengthened, and suddenly he wasn’t hunching over so much as filling the space, his shoulders were rippling and his shirt was rapidly becoming too small for his body—the first tear appeared.

“Turn it off,” Darcy said, her voice dry. The screen flickered off immediately.

“SHIELD was on the scene in less than five minutes,” JARVIS said, soothingly. “The entire incident lasted less than twenty minutes.”

Darcy turned on her side carefully, facing away from the wall that was no longer a screen. “I’m going to try and get some sleep,” she announced, mostly to shut JARVIS up.

Of course she was lying. She didn’t even try.

\--

“How many.” A familiar voice startled her out of a half doze that she had fallen into without even being aware of it. The drugs she was on were _good_. The voice seemed to come from in front of her, which made no sense since all that was in front of her was wall—

Of course. Jane had mentioned they had stuffed a bunch of people into the storage rooms, and the walls of her room were less walls and more partitions, she shouldn’t really be surprised that they were paper thin.

She was able to process all of this—the voice was coming from next door, and was coming in loud and clear, before she was able to process why the voice was so familiar, despite the fact that the words were being said so flatly. It was Bruce. Bruce was in the room next to hers.

She startled into a sitting position on her bed, ribs protesting, then froze. Dummy moved towards her, but stopped when she did. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Darcy pressed a hand against it.

“Heyyy,” a quieter but just as familiar voice said. Tony.  “How’re you doing, big guy?”

The walls of this place really were shit. Tony couldn’t have been talking louder than his usual conversational tone and she could hear him loud and clear. There was something in his voice, though. Something she had never heard from him before. It was more subdued than usual, but... She puzzled over what it could be while her heart still raced, and tried to tell herself she wasn’t poised to bolt, waiting for Bruce to speak again.

He didn’t disappoint. “ _How many_.” He said again, his voice a hiss. She flinched alone in her room violently. It was completely flat, but held something that reminded her a bit of their confrontation in the lab, what felt like a forever ago. Something of the crack of the monster.

Tony sighed. “Twenty-three,” he said quietly.

Darcy breathed out with Bruce, her breath a gulp in her ears. She finally knew what it was that she was hearing in Tony’s voice. Pity. It jabbed her in the heart as deeply as a physical blow, and her free hand clenched her bedsheets in a vice grip.

Bruce said nothing.

“Most of them were agents,” Tony said quickly, “They knew what they were signing on for. And it really could have been a lot worse—“

“ _How_?” Bruce said, so low she had to strain to catch it.

Tony promptly shut up, something before this minute she hadn’t been sure he was capable of.

A strained silence spread in the two rooms.

“I’d like for you to leave now,” Bruce said finally, in some semblance of his regular voice.

Tony sighed again. “Whatever you like, big guy,” he said tiredly, “but I still mean what I said before. I want you to know that. _This wasn’t a mistake_.”

After a few minutes, Darcy could just catch the _swoosh_ of the door opening.

She was wrenching herself onto the ground before she registered what she was doing. Her mid section complained with loud twinges of pain immediately, and she was thoroughly caught up in her bed sheets.

She flailed around violently, trying to detangle herself, Dummy plucking fruitlessly at bits of sheet. She had to get in there. All her thoughts of fear had fled away, and she was just left with the conviction that she needed to get into that room.

She finally tore the sheets off—her ribs twinged again sharply—then stumbled out into the hall.

Her heart machine started to beep loudly as soon as she had ripped herself away, and in the hall a doctor looking fellow was already walking towards her room, shouting, “Hey--!”

Someone was standing outside of Bruce’s room.

It was a SHIELD agent, all in black, and Darcy knew immediately he was different. For one thing, his standard SHIELD field agent uniform was missing its sleeves. He was standing in an easy, loose, confident way and she knew that he wouldn’t hesitate or fail to put down any threat. So many agents tried to emulate that effortless efficiency, but this man embodied it. She didn’t doubt that if the Hulk had burst out of the room at that instant this man would take care of it.

She started towards the door of the room hesitantly. His sunglass covered eyes immediately turned to regard her, but he made no other movement. The doctor down the hall stopped approaching as soon as he saw the Agent’s Agent take over the situation and stepped into another room, apparently ready to help someone who needed it more.

She took another step towards Bruce’s door. Then another.

He didn’t do anything. In fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that his head had turned she wouldn’t have been sure he saw her at all. Actually, she still wasn’t a hundred per cent on it. His shades were impenetrable.

Darcy screwed up her courage and placed a hand out the door. The Agent still didn’t do a thing. She nodded companionably at him, realizing with a sudden, sick shock that she was dressed in backless hospital scrubs and nothing else(to his credit he didn’t even glance at her bare ass—talk about professional) and opened the door to Bruce’s room and walked in as regally as she could given that she was wearing zero underwear.

He was out of his own hospital bed and dressed already. He looked a lot better than Darcy felt.

In fact, he looked amazingly healthy. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had no shoes or socks on and that his hair was plastered to his head what with being passed out until recently Darcy would never have suspected that he had just finished turning into Mr. Hyde. Apparently getting a thousand times bigger and throwing a temper tantrum agreed with him.

At the moment she walked in he was stuffing his wallet into his pants energetically. She felt something curl through herself slowly and was gratified to realize that it was anger. She fucking knew it.

“I fucking knew it,” she announced, stalking into the room.

He looked up at her, startled, then his eyes took in her state which, yeah, probably wasn’t great, what with her hospital scrubs and the no doubt bruises on her face and arms, and body, and the bandages around her middle—an IV insertion was still attached to her arm—and blanched. “Darcy—“ he started to say.

She didn’t let him finish. “I fucking _knew_ it!” she shouted. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The door _swooshed_ closed behind her with no further comment. Apparently the Agent’s Agent didn’t care to hear the rest of the conversation.

He started towards her instinctively, reaching toward her with one hand, then thought better of it and dropped it hurriedly. “Oh god, you’re hurt. I’m sorry. I’m so—“

“ _Answer the question_ ,” she hissed, and he flinched away from her, his eyes not meeting hers. He no longer looked healthy and refreshed; he looked haunted and drawn, and didn’t say a word.

“You’re running away aren’t you.” This startled a glance out of him: his eyes met her briefly then slid away. That too-familiar bitter quirk set itself against his lips again—she wanted to rip it off.

“Darcy—Ms. Lewis...”

“I knew it. You _are_ running away.”

And she had known it too. As soon as he had spoken she had been half out of bed and it was fear that drove her out but it was something else that made her freeze there and listen. It was the fact that the first thing Bruce Banner said when he woke up was _how many_ in a flat, resigned tone of voice, not used to anything else but the aftermath of destruction he didn’t remember causing. It was the fact that she knew he would try and run immediately—a new place as soon as he could, never staying for long.

“It’s better if I go. Trust me.”

She took another step closer. He took one back, toward the bed. “How?”

“You...you’re hurt. Because of me. And it’s not just you. People...people _died_.” In spite of himself he made another abortive gesture towards her. she took another step forward.

_Twenty three_ , said Tony’s voice in her head, flat and sad. Full of pity. She looked at Bruce, carefully, from where he stood against the bed, his head bowed down.

Pity and fear. That was all people ever felt towards him. It was no surprise Tony’s army had always gravitated towards him, she had known that instinctively; had never questioned their adoration. He was a kindred spirit. After all, they were leftover useless machines, forgotten and obsolete. He knew more than a little of their loneliness. Was that what she felt?

From when she had first met him making a statement by taking that elevator ride with him, pulling the all nighter in Jane’s lab, her repeated attempts to make him come out of his shell, laughing at his jokes,  the amount of food he ate, the way he smiled like the sun coming out, the warmth of his fingers against hers, the starlight behind his face, there in that night. She had thought she could watch him forever—no. Whatever she felt, the roil of emotion in her, a mixture of exasperation and fondness and something more, something that turned in her again and again, making her feel nauseous and dizzyingly excited in equal measure—it wasn’t pity.

But fear...behind her closed eyes she could see the Hulk, covered in the blood of people he had killed. In front of her open eyes stood Bruce, who was eyeing her carefully. When she first met him she had thought that there was nothing he wouldn’t do to save _anybody_. That was still true. But Darcy was afraid of him. She hated herself for it, he deserved better than that, but the thudding of her heart in the room was eight tenths anger and two tenths terror. She looked in his face and could see where the bones of the Hulk’s face could fit in, where she could pull and stretch to turn familiar Bruce into something out of a nightmare. But Darcy Lewis always had been and always would be about facing her fears.

“You’re not running away from this,” she told him firmly, searching for his gaze and holding it, “You don’t get to just pack up and leave without another word, without saying goodbye to any of us. That’s not just your decision to make anymore. I won’t let you.”

When Darcy had been seven years old every kid on her block had had a bike. Jeremy Stevens down the street had a crazy mountain bike that had ten gears and was so big for him he had to stand up to ride it, butt not even touching the seat. He had looked pretty badass riding it, like he was constantly in a hurry, and since he had attached a playing card to the back wheel, you could hear him coming a mile away. The boys used to ride circles around her after school, looping around her and saying mean things about her dad never being there, and about how her mom was trash. No matter how fast she ran, Darcy could never catch up. But she hadn’t wanted a bike like Jeremy Stevens. No, she wanted the same bike as Lindsay Evans, pink with white handlebars, and silver tassels, and a white basket that you could put your lunch into on the front. She had begged her mom for weeks before her birthday for one, even making the dubious promise that she would be good _for ever_ if she got one, fingers crossed behind her back.

On her birthday her mother had unveiled a bike. Not her bike. The best that could be said about this one was that it was the right shape. It was rust coloured, mostly because it was covered in rust, didn’t have any gears, or a basket, or tassels, and was even bigger than Jeremy Stevens’ monster. But because Darcy knew that money was tight, and because she loved her mother (also she was secretly relieved that she only had to be good for like, a week, for this bike) she hugged her mom and went out dutifully to master the monstrosity.

It was impossible. The bike was bent and the balance was off, and was so tall she had to straddle the middle bar just to get her feet on the pedals. Which, by the way, were so rusted that about the only way she could get any movement was starting on the top of the steepest hill and just pumping like crazy. She collected so many bruises in the first few weeks that her mom made dubious sounds of taking her to see a head doctor in the city and her counsellor had pulled her aside for a Serious Talk. Jeremy Stevens and his boys had to take to circling her on the ground where she had fallen, groaning and immobile.

But Darcy didn’t give up. She taped up her permanently skinned knees and gritted her teeth, and practiced day in and day out, and while she never got the bike to anything resembling speedy, she got it _mobile_. And then she on top of the steepest hill one afternoon until Jeremy Stevens rounded the corner on the bottom, set her jaw, rode down and _rammed him_.

Then she disentangled herself from the bent remains of her bicycle and Jeremy Stevens, casually spat in his face, and walked away. Because _Fuck bikes_. And _Fuck Jeremy Stevens_. Darcy Lewis doesn’t stand for bullshit, and she doesn’t run away from her problems.

And so now she closed the last steps between them before he had a chance to react to it and grabbed him around the waist.

He flinched backward violently with his whole body. They tipped back onto the bed, Darcy’s nose slamming painfully into his collarbone. Bruce Banner was all bony angles and hard muscle, a mixture of eating sporadically and all of the crazy yoga he probably did _then felt the need to tell her about_ and landing on him _hurt_.

She hissed as he jostled her bandages and he immediately stopped trying to squirm out of her grasp and instead tried to do this thing where he put one hand on her head and pushed, like she was an inner tube or something.

“What are you doing?” he said finally, when his lame ass pushing had no effect on the Darcy Lewis Deathgrip. Well duh. He was treating her like glass and she had given up caring if she was hurting him but...

Huh. She hadn’t really thought that far ahead. She just knew that she couldn’t let him leave. If he left he’d end up in some country in the middle of nowhere and it would probably take another alien invasion for him to show up again. And call her untraditional, but she was never the kind of girl to sit around and pine for alien invasions.

“Why would you run away again?” she said, and was surprised at the sadness in her own voice. _She hadn’t meant to sound like that_.

He stopped looking rather desperately at the ceiling ( _oh fuck these scrubs are totally backless gotta stop forgetting that)_ and met her eyes in the only way that Bruce Banner seemed to know how: startled into it. There was something in his gaze, resignation and...regret?

“Everyone close to me gets hurt,” he said lightly, as if by saying it like it was no big deal she wouldn’t realize the absolute heartbreak that was etched into every line of his being, “it’s just better to keep moving.”

She freed one of her hands from her vise grip around his waist and touched his cheek. His muscles twitched under her fingers and she smoothed them with her hand, stroked until the lines of worry around his eyes melted away like she had always known they would, felt the scratchy line of stubble set around his jaw. His eyes were bigger without his glasses, his eyelashes longer, and he watched her warily, every muscle in his body still tense.

“You’d hurt me more by leaving,” she said honestly, and his eyes snapped to her face. There was something new in them, something raw, and hungry, and she felt heat surge through her body, realizing just how close she really was, sprawled intimately on top of him, one arm still clutching the back of his shirt. She had just enough time to think that maybe she was glad for the backless scrubs and started shifting closer in response when he closed his eyes. Everything—the heat, the moment, was gone as surely as if he had flipped a switch.

“Please get off of me now,” he said rigidly. Darcy doubted that he had the ability to Hulk out twice in a row like that—the refractory period on that thing _must_ be a bitch, but even so she could hear the low note of anger present in his voice. The last time she had heard it she had walked out.

Darcy stiffened in spite of herself. But, _in for a penny..._ “No, I don’t think so,” she said lightly, trying to shift into a more comfortable position (nothing doing; Dr. Bruce Banner was built like a _rock_ and was not helping by keeping his body perfectly tense), “I think I’m gonna stay awhile. I’m hurt, if you hadn’t noticed, and I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do with you yet. Figured I’d decide after I woke up.”

“This isn’t funny.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. His irises were now flecked with green. _Huh. There’s something you don’t see everyday._

“Who’s laughing, doc? The answer to which is definitely not me. I don’t know if you heard about this in medical school, but broken ribs? No joke. Pun intended.”

If anything, Bruce Banner looked even more pissed.

She wiggled her arms out from under him and wrapped her hands around each wrist tightly. “I’m going to sleep now. And if you think you’re just going to wiggle out of here, you’ve got another think coming. You know that game you play as a kid where you hold onto someone’s feet and don’t let go? Yeah I’m the best at that.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because you don’t get to leave and pretend it’s better for everyone this way. I’m not part of your penance Bruce.” She closed her eyes and saw an arm in a white lab coat sleeve, the end dripping with blood. “The rest, we’ll figure out the rest later.”

She laid her forehead on his chest. He smelled like cinnamon and soap, and underneath it a tint of sweat that she was sure was left over from the Hulk. It was not unpleasant.

Bruce Banner was incredibly uncomfortable to sleep on top of. He radiated body heat in a way that was almost obnoxious, and insisted on keeping every muscle in his body clenched, probably in a deluded effort to convince her that he did not want this and she should probably just leave him alone. She could feel his heart beat through his chest, still slow and rhythmic despite his best efforts to convince that that he was pissed, and Darcy had no doubt he could feel hers, which was admittedly pounding all over the place. Darcy didn’t honestly expect to fall asleep—her ribs were twinging more urgently now and she was certain if she did her dreams would be filled with images of death, but she managed to doze off nonetheless, lulled by the steady beat of his breathing.

She woke up in relative darkness, to find that she had slipped from lying directly on top of him to sprawled half over him in her sleep, her hands still a vice around his wrists. She was wretchedly sweaty from how hot he was and no more rested than she would have been had she spent her time awake. He must have dimmed the lights sometime while she slept; there were no windows in his room.

Her head was on the bed now, and as she watched he turned his head slowly to regard her with a hooded gaze. He was still holding himself stiff, and his breathing was still that same even tempo, as if he had simply borne those hours like he had borne everything else—without complaint.

She let out a breath in a long, ragged sigh. He said nothing. She had half expected to wake up to an empty room, a hastily scrawled note, something nice and unexpectedly tender which would complete the process of breaking her heart that would probably leave _years_ of follow up. Her vice grip was no joke but neither was his intellect. If he had really wanted to go she was sure he’d have found a way. But he was still there.

He was still there.


	7. Chapter 7

_You’re on your honor_

_‘Cause I’m a goner,_

_And you_

_Haven’t even begun_

\--

Tony arrived with bluster and pomp and an overabundance of swagger that gave Darcy a headache just to look at. He kept his eyes on her boobs the entire time he was making proverbial mountains out of the molehill of finding them in the same room together, and since her boobs were entirely covered by her scrubs Darcy knew that she must have looked colossally terrible. When Tony Stark was not even making fun of you, you knew it must be bad.

He also made no bones of staring exaggeratedly at her ass, and only the twin threats of Pepper and a knock upside the head were enough to snap his eyes back up to her face.

“You couldn’t beat me up in that state, Lewis,” he sneered, “don’t even try. It’d be sad. Sadder.”

“Yeah and think how sad it will be for you when I beat you up anyway and JARVIS posts the video on YouTube with the title ‘Iron Man Gets His Ass Kicked by an Invalid.’”

Tony’s sharp eyes took in Bruce’s half packed bag (if you could call it that—two shirts and a bottle of water in a bundled up bedsheet were sad even by Darcy’s standards, and she had practically made an industry of running away with the clothes off her back as a child; just for the adventure of the journey, mind you, not that she had had anywhere to _go_. She was always convinced that if she managed to get more than three blocks away she’d find a magical portal or a talking dog or something, though neither her neighbourhood policeman or her mother had ever taken kindly to her convictions) and Bruce’s increasingly apparent sulking in the corner, and said nothing more than a pair of expressively raised eyebrows. Say what you will about Tony Stark’s relative obtuseness (and trust me, she could _monologue_ on the point by now) but the man wasn’t a genius for nothing.

That was also when she discovered the ability to hold a conversation with Tony, using only their eyes.

_That bad, huh?_ His eyebrows said.

She rolled her eyes in return which meant _well, what do you expect?_ Then frowned. _I’m worried about him._

Tony frowned back. _Me too. What should we do?_

She darted her eyes at Bruce who was staring at the two of them suspiciously and then at Tony. _Can you keep an eye on him? I don’t think we should leave him alone for awhile._

Tony looked at the bedsheet expressively. _Or he’s gonna pull a Running Man huh? Got it. Flight Risk here is safe with me_. He then wiggled his eyebrows at her, which meant either _how are_ you _Lewis?_ Or _Damn Lewis, you’re lookin’_ fine _tonight_ , she still hadn’t worked out all the kinks in their apparent telepathic bond, though knowing Tony it was probably a mixture of both.

She narrowed her eyes, which was, _Fine. ...Well, not awesome. But fine._ And _I both know where you sleep and I am already planning the Autotune remix of ‘Iron Man Gets His Ass Kicked by an Invalid’_ all at the same time _._

After that the conversation degenerated into a flurry of glaring and less-than-surreptitiously giving each other the finger until Bruce finally announced, “I don’t know what you guys are doing over there, but please. Stop it.”

 “You and me, Doc,” Tony said grandly, “Are going to have a Bro’s Night In.”

Bruce stared at him blankly. “Tony, you really think this is the time to be...partying?”

Tony sighed dramatically. “I wish. I mean normally my parties are Wild with a capital W but I’ve since noticed a rather disheartening trend of you being a bummer. No, this is going to be pretty appropriately lame. Trust me, neither of us are going to have fun tonight.”

Darcy took advantage of Bruce’s protests over the admitted inappropriateness of having a Bro’s Night In while SHIELD was still literally picking up the pieces to slip out of the room with as much dignity as she could muster. (Which wasn’t much, it turned out, not when Tony Stark felt the need to wolf-whistle piercingly the second she had her back turned).

Jane was waiting in the hall next to Agent Silent who was still wearing sunglasses despite the fact that it was probably full dark outside not to mention the fact that they were _indoors_ , and who otherwise did not look like he had moved a muscle in the last five hours.

“The doctors say you’re free to go,” Jane said unhappily, “but you’ll need to check in with SHIELD in the morning.” She followed up this piece of glad tidings by holding out a bundle to Darcy—oh thank god, it was clothing.

The Special Agent outside the door turned his head away politely when Darcy started to hug Jane fiercely in the delighted anticipation of finally being _clothed_ , or maybe he was just checking the perimeter, who knows. He had seemingly long since decided Darcy was no threat, and she couldn’t blame him. Despite her conviction that she could hand Tony his ass to him six ways from Sunday (she had little doubt that Stark Tower storage soundproofing was bad in all the ways) it was pretty obvious that Special Agent here could disable her in less than a second. And probably still without having looked like he had moved a muscle. Seriously. Dude looked like he had been carved from mid-sized _mountain_.

Jane hugged back just as fiercely, which was hell on Darcy’s sides, but briefly in a way that only Jane-hugs were, and speaking of which handed over a white prescription bag. “I can’t believe I’m your SHIELD emergency contact,” she said. “I’m so mad I could’ve replaced these with poison and lost zero sleep over it. Seriously. Promise me you’ll never do something like that again.”

“Not a chance, boss. You think just ‘cause you’re the one with the fancy degrees means you get run around and do the stupid things all the time? You really gotta spread the love around.”

\--

A long sleep, a handful of pills, forty minutes in Tony Stark’s godlike shower (which probably was also a mecha, she was now startled to realize) and a very uncomfortable examination by a humourless SHIELD doctor wherein he had poked at her ribs and made a ‘hmmm’ sound at the startled yelp she gave—seriously, _these_ guys were the nation’s last defence? made her if not physically, at least mentally prepped for her SHIELD official debrief.

SHIELD is not surprisingly empty, and she was buzzed through with entirely new staff that she didn’t feel comfortable asking annoying questions to, and who eyed her with a mixture of distrust and dislike, so she had no idea if Martin, the guy who was usually on point was in the hospital, or dead (oh god), or just off shift, or what, and tried her best not to think about it.

Twenty minutes in with Agent Sitwell, who she liked as much as she liked anyone working for the Man, but mostly because he reminded her of her junior year math teacher, super nice and quietly funny in a way that only math teachers, and somehow top secret super agents got to be (though she rather doubted that Mr. Hernadez had carried around a gun and could kill a man with his bare hands), got a buzz in his earpiece.

“Excuse me, Ms. Lewis,” he said, looking at her up and down, then stepped out without another word.

She looked down at her hands, twisted them together nervously on the table. _Now what?_ she thought miserably. The debrief had gone as well as those things ever went, which is to say, not very, and Agent Sitwell had very kindly refrained from mentioning either the rather dramatic state of her face (a bruise was blossoming on her _chin_ , speaking of weird places to get bruises) or the stiff way she still moved. And though he regarded her answers to most of his difficult questions (which ranged anywhere from _why did you run down the hall?_ to _when were you first aware you were dealing with the Hulk?_ ) with a decidedly disbelieving air (she didn’t blame him. Her answers had been _I thought they could use backup_ and _uh...I think someone mentioned it?_ which were admittedly both unprofessional and highly ridiculous, though one didn’t say _I don’t know_ in SHIELD debriefs, like, at all), he also had refrained from questioning her too deeply.

The door opened again almost immediately, and this time Maria Hill stepped in.

Darcy blanched. Strike being mentally prepared. She was _not prepared at all_ for this.

The entire debrief started again, with Agent Hill asking far more probing questions and making no bones about letting her disbelief leak all over her face when Darcy gave the same old horrible answers.

 “Why did you even go up there? Our records show Dr. Foster using her override code.”

“Oh, uh...we thought it was a joke or something. I think Jane was in a hurry?”

See? And that had been the _truth_.

Agent Hill sighed deeply, and pinched the bridge of her nose, something Darcy was sure she only did under extreme duress.

“You’re seriously going to go with that one, Lewis? Twenty four people died yesterday.”

Darcy’s head shot up from where she had been pointedly examining her nails. “ _Twenty four?_ But I thought...”

Maria Hill’s eyes were steely. “One of our agents died in ICU this morning.”

“Oh God.”

“Do you have any idea what caused the incident?”

Darcy tried to reel herself in from the nonsense place she’d occupied, and tried to focus on the question at hand. When she’d joined SHIELD she’d been warned about this; that good agents died every day, and that in order for their sacrifice to mean something everyone had to get on with their job. _There may come a time_ , her recruiter had said with sympathetic eyes, _when you will lose someone you care about and be asked to come into work the same day. Can you do that, Darcy?_ It was the first and only time he had called her by her first name, and Darcy, too amped up with the need to help Jane, to roll up her sleeves and get to the bottom of the big ball of crazy that had happened in New York, too heady from the anticipation of getting to be an honest-to-God Man in Black had said _yes, absolutely_ , without even thinking the question over. Now for the first time she looked at Maria Hill and saw slight smudges under her eyes, realized that as Assistant Director she probably had sat by bedsides, had made phone calls, and while Darcy had slept fitfully—haunted by twisted piles of bodies and in her dreams she could still hear the screaming—Maria Hill had probably helped untwist those bodies, had probably not slept at all.

She made an effort to think about the question now. The video that JARVIS showed her was playing on the screen now...no doubt SHIELD had the same footage on loop in their analysts’ rooms but she went over it again. He had been fine, he had been working, then he had been scrabbling for something...or just scrabbling. Why was she so convinced he had been looking for something?

“He was on Diazepam. Among other things.”

Maria Hill raised a smooth eyebrow, either impressed that Darcy had known that or impressed she had been able to speak a coherent sentence. “Mr. Stark has mentioned as much. Shouldn’t that have prevented an episode?”

“He mentioned that the other guy...the Hulk doesn’t like the drugs. Maybe...” It was a long shot. She shrugged miserably. She hadn’t seen him take anything the last couple of days of their vacation. Which wasn’t to say he hadn’t taken anything. Bruce Banner had the trained sneakiness of a drug addict. “Maybe the Hulk broke free?”

“We’ll keep it under consideration,” Agent Hill said at last. “Now, would you like to put that transfer paperwork through now?”

“No,” Darcy said immediately. She didn’t even think about it, she just answered because when Maria Hill had told her that someone else died in the morning her response hadn’t been _oh god those poor families_ or _oh god I need to get away_ ,  but _oh god what will Bruce think?_   “What will happen to Dr. Banner?”

Agent Hill looked angry. “Nothing. You can’t contain something like that, and it’s not like we can just ship him off. Our efforts in the past have yielded...mixed results and the Hulk is far stronger than anything...well. Mr. Stark has assured us he will take greater care in the future, and we’ve increased his security detail. What else can we do?”

“You don’t trust him?”

She fixed Darcy with an all-knowing eye. “Do you?”

Darcy could say nothing at all.

“Now let’s talk about your role in all this.” She cued security footage from yesterday and Darcy saw herself leaving the elevator with Jane, shoving her back in (Dummy’s arm helping to pluck Jane into the elevator, something she would have found endearing in any other circumstance) and running helter-skelter down the hall. She’s with some agents, a dark missile is lobbed out of the lab, and then she’s fighting past them all, standing before the Hulk, who even on security feed comes across larger than life. Agent Hill mercifully paused the tape before she’s hit.

Darcy swallowed. All laid out in front of her like that, it was even more ridiculous than she had remembered. She hadn’t even pulled out her gun.

“Care to explain yourself?”

“Ma’am?”

“We train our field agents to the best of our ability. That is the most we can do. We give them the tools to protect themselves, and we send them out into the world. Sometimes those tools aren’t enough. Sometimes agents die. It’s an inevitability.” She paused. “A tough inevitability, but it happens, and we prepare for it the best we can. But it doesn’t explain why _you_ , a research assistant, felt the need to run directly into the danger, without any of the proper training. You should have run _away_. What the hell were you thinking, Lewis?”

_When your body tells you to run, you_ run.

Darcy ran her hands through her hair, a nervous habit she had picked up from Bruce. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.” Almost as bad as saying _I don’t know_. Years from now they’ll probably still be showing this video to new recruits. What Not To Do.

“Clearly,” Agent Hill said dryly. “Did you think you could stop him?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Darcy hunched over, miserable. Agent Hill was right. She had had no training for that, didn’t wear any armour, and was an _under_ -qualified research assistant.

“Well? What were you thinking?”

Darcy looked up. “I just,” she whispered, “I just didn’t want him to be alone.”

Agent Hill regarded her evenly for several long seconds. “Next time this happens,” she said finally, “Director Fury will conduct the debrief himself. And it will be the last one you will ever have.”

Darcy flinched into her seat, and almost missed Agent Hill getting up to leave. “Yes, ma’am.”

She paused by the door for a long moment, then looked at Darcy with a mixture of sympathy and disgust. “I expected more out of you, Lewis.”

Maria Hill left the room and Darcy was too miserable to notice when Agent Sitwell slipped back in until he cleared his throat. “Sorry about that,” he said cheerfully. “So. Where were we?”

\--

Stark Tower lobby was quiet, the hum of business personnel missing, and only one secretary at the front desk. Agent Sitwell had mentioned that the staff had been given the day off and it’s no wonder; as Darcy was coming in workers dressed all in black were only just carting off the last of the broken glass and rubble that littered the sidewalk outside.

She shouldn’t be there. No one was expecting her, for once Dummy was not even waiting for her in the lobby, but she had to see it. She had to know.

“Seventy-eighth floor please, JARVIS,” she said, and her voice cracked a little, at the end. They go up in silence, and she spent the ride digging crescents into her palm with her nails.

There was nothing when the elevator door dings open. Quite literally. Everything was gone, the benches, the bridge, the...blood. In fact, even the walls were gone and Darcy stepped out into a wide, empty, expanse.

Everything was painted over a stark white, with hastily laid concrete drying on the ground, a mockery of a sterile environment. Any reminder that this floor had housed over twenty scientists in five labs was gone, and if she hadn’t known better she would have thought she was walking into an unfinished floor.

SHIELD must have done the clean up, since anything even slightly wrecked was knocked down completely and carted off. Tony’s people had more class, and would have salvaged what they could. At the very least they wouldn’t have painted over Jane’s murals. She wondered fleetingly what happened to the remains of Tony’s army, if any had survived. Probably tagged and sealed and shut away into SHIELD evidence, never to be seen again. It was a sobering thought; at the heel of many sobering thoughts.

Even the light was different...she blinked, looked up. Stark Tower medical had been destroyed in the attack, she remembered. It had been on the eightieth floor, and looking up she’s pretty sure that thirty six feet above her, she could see its ceiling. Floors seventy nine and eighty had windows and they were all open now, glassless frames and sunlight pouring in, filtering down to where she stood. There’s a wicked breeze going on; New York City was _cold_ seventy eightish stories up, even in the summer.

It was eerie, being here, like being in a creepy, haunted place, even if it was full day and Stark Tower, and she said as much when Bruce and Tony walked in less than ten minutes after her.

Bruce had bags under his eyes and no longer looked to be in the peak of health. His skin was sallow and his hair was wilted and looked as if he somehow had not slept in a week even though she knew this was patently untrue. Tony also looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, but being that he was Tony Stark this meant that he was as fresh and impeccably dressed as ever, and only very slightly subdued.

“You missed out, Lewis,” Tony said, “We totally had ourselves a bros night in. Lots of alcohol (for me, the Incredible Sulk over there opted to), _Dr. Who_ marathon, three am pillow fight, which I totally won by the way. It was awesome.”

“That’s it,” Bruce said, his voice coming from far away, deeply tired, “I’ll sign whatever you want, Tony. Just...never again.”

“Yahtzee,” Tony drawled, “JARVIS, get Pepper in here. Tell her to bring someone from Legal. No, scratch that. You bring someone from Legal, JARVIS. I’m still recovering from that last girl they sent. Get Rhodey in here too. Always helps to have a military type presiding over these types of legal document things.”

“Sir, Colonel Rhodes has requested that he only be contacted during his stay in New York on matters of national security.”

“What’s not national security about this? This, JARVIS, is the definition of national security.”

“In his words, sir, Colonel Rhodes has asked me to clarify, ‘Code: Aubergine and above only.’”

“Oh God the code system? I can’t remember the code system anymore. We made that up when we were on absinthe—I mean why else would the top threat level be Code: Passion Pink? And don’t think I haven’t noticed you promoting Rhodey whenever he’s not around. You can get court martialed for that, you know.”

“No I can’t sir, and as I am the only one who treats Colonel Rhodes with the level of respect he deserves, I thought it would be best to condense said respect.”

“What are you talking about? Pepper respects him. Fine. Whatever. He’d probably just bum everyone out anyway, give a lecture on national pride and civic responsibility or something. Did you get Pepper?”

“Right here, Tony.”

Pepper came in with a small mousey looking man wearing a smart suit, nodded at Darcy and Bruce (at Darcy with some concern over her injuries, which knowing how the SHIELD and Tower grapevine worked, had probably been upgraded to amputation of multiple limbs in which case she was probably just nodding at the lifelike mobility of Stark Industries prosthetics since Darcy was currently nearly bouncing out of her skin with curiosity, and at Bruce with polite respect and friendly concern, which of course was exactly the level of respect and concern she should have infused into a nod anyway and PS _how did she do that?_ ),and handed a small stack of papers to Bruce. “We just need your imprint, Dr. Banner.”

At about this time Darcy officially ran out of respectful silence and nearly tripped herself running over to look over Bruce’s shoulder. “What is this?”

Tony grinned broadly. “Well as brilliant as your plan of literally being dead weight was, Lewis, let’s not forget who the real genius in the room is. This is a contract that will forbid the big guy here from trying to pull a disappearing stunt again. I’ve been working on him all night and all day to get him to sign it.”

“Lemme see that.” Darcy snatched the contract out of Bruce’s hand and flipped through it, growing more incredulous by the second, reading choice bits in a voice that rapidly approached operatic.

“’I, Bruce Banner, hereafter known as “The Incredible Hulk”’...’”Anthony Stark”, hereafter known as “The Amazing Iron Man”’; these hereafters are longer than your real names, Tony...

“’In the event that The Incredible Hulk “Hulks the fuck out”’...’will not “throw a major hissy fit and try to get the fuck out of dodge like a giant pussy”’...’he will instead “calm the fuck down”’...seriously? I mean I’m no lawyer, but this is literally the sketchiest contract I’ve ever seen.”

The mousey man cleared this throat. “Mr. Stark is very trying on the Legal Department,” he said dryly, “but I can assure you the contract is airtight.”

“And you’ll find that I am also very litigious,” Tony added gleefully.

“You’re actually going to sign this?”

Bruce shrugged limply. “You don’t understand. When we watch _Dr. Who_...he _does all the voices_.”

“Yeah but according to this contract, if The Incredible Hulk violates any of the above terms, you forfeit among other things...your firstborn son?”

“What!” Bruce ripped the document out from her hands and scanned it. “What are you going to do with a baby, anyway, Tony?”

Tony shrugged expansively. “What does anyone do with a baby? I figure I’d just let it roam free in the wild or something. You know, burn that bridge when I come to it.”

“I’m not signing this.”

Tony immediately put on an exaggerated British accent. “ _But Doctor! We haven’t the time for this!_ ” Darcy winced. Not only was his accent atrocious, but Tony had also pitched his voice painfully higher.

“Don’t worry,” Pepper said smoothly, “I figured this would happen. I brought along a non ridiculous version of the contract.”

While Bruce looked over the second one carefully, Darcy studied his profile just as carefully. It was clear Tony was incredibly worried since he was dealing with it in what was probably the only way he knew how: ridiculous over the top antics. But in the months that she had worked with him Darcy had seen Bruce shrug away those antics with ease.

She had little doubt that if Bruce really wanted to run a contract signed in this room was not going to be even a thought that crossed his mind before he was outta there, but the very fact that he was signing it, that he was playing along to Tony and Darcy’s exaggerated farce instead of sulking alone in the dark meant...what?

The problem was, she really didn’t know. She just knew that it was probably a good sign.

Pepper left with the lawyer just as quietly and efficiently as she had come in. She laid a hand briefly on Bruce’s shoulder, then on Darcy’s, had reminded Tony about a dinner with a pleasantly threatening tone of voice and had whisked out with the scent of excruciatingly expensive perfume.

Darcy stalked around the gutted floor space a bit more, and Bruce did the same. Their actions had the disconcerting tendency to echo, and that breeze, like all the winds at Stark Tower, no joke.

“So what now?” she said.

“They didn’t exactly do a good job with the redesign, did they? It’ll be easy to get some functioning equipment back in here though,” Tony said thoughtfully. “I like the new use of space.” He nodded at the ceiling, still thirty six feet above.

“So what, you’re going to keep it like that?”

“I think our guest likes the view,” Bruce said lightly, and nodded up at a corner of the ceiling. Darcy squinted. There was a man in the corner, which she was sure hadn’t been occupied (since, you know, it was the _ceiling_ ) when she had come in, wedged in and watching silently. She shivered. She had no idea when or how he had gotten up there, since there was nothing between them and the ceiling but wall and space. She couldn’t be certain, but it looked like the same silent agent who had stood guard outside of Bruce’s medical room. Well, Agent Hill _had_ said they were upping security.

“Yeah, but I don’t think Dr. Lee is going to appreciate you taking over his lab space,” she said finally, having discarded both “holy shit there’s a man up there” and “is he holding himself up with the strength of his _ab muscles_ or something” as probably being slightly uncool things to say.

Bruce looked down and clenched his hands, and Tony looked at her with something like pity in his eyes. “You hadn’t heard? Dr. Lee is dead. Him and two of his lab technicians didn’t make it out.”

Trust Tony not to sugar coat the news. _Most of them were agents, trained for this..._ most. She swallowed. “Oh.”

“He stayed behind to try and get everyone to safety, then went back for the others, who were stuck in the shower.”

Darcy didn’t quite know how to feel. Dr. Lee was a pain in the ass, and she had spent most of their interactions wishing idly he was somewhere else and even picturing his violent death, but he had been doing important work and he had been a good man, in his own way. He didn’t quite deserve the way that Tony was rattling off facts about his last moments, and he definitely didn’t deserve to go like that.

“Bruce,” she said quietly, and laid a hand on his arm. He flinched away, but even so, she could feel the corded muscles under his crumpled shirt, tight and unyielding. “I’m sorry.”

 He laughed abruptly, a painful, bitter sound. “ _You’re_ sorry?” he said, his voice breaking, then laughed again. “I’m fine,” he followed this uncomfortable display by saying, his voice now brusque and clipped, “let’s move on to the next thing.”

“Which is...?” Darcy said, more than a little desperately.

“We get back to work,” Jane said firmly, from the doorway.

 


End file.
